Fast Evolutionary Progranuning Techniques for Short-Term Hydrothermal Scheduling

Fast evolutionary programming techniques are applied for solution of short-term hydrothermal scheduling problem. Evolutionary programming (EP) based algorithms with Gaussian and other mutation techniques have been developed and tested on a multireservoir cascaded hydroelectric system having prohibited operating zones and a thermal unit with valve point loading. Numerical results show that all EP algorithms are capable of finding very nearly global solutions within a reasonable time, but an EP-algorithm with the better of the Gaussian and Cauchy mutations appears to be the best among all EPs in terms of convergence speed, solution time, and cost.