Emission constrained unit commitment problem solution using invasive weed optimization Algorithm

With an increase in environmental considerations over the years, it has become extremely significant to reduce the emission levels in all areas of technology. Likewise, the problem of Unit Commitment (UC), which has always been thought of as a problem to reduce generation cost also involves an added objective of reducing emission levels. This paper presents a new methodology to solve this multi-objective problem. The problem of unit commitment keeping in mind the emission levels has been solved using the evolutionary algorithm of Invasive Weed Optimization (IWO). This proposed algorithm has been tested for two cases, eleven unit twenty four hour systems and eleven unit one sixty eight hour system. Both the results of unit commitment and emission levels have been obtained individually using IWO and the best solution has been achieved by compromising between emission levels and generation cost. This balance has been achieved using trade-off between the two separate solutions. The advantage of this new method gives much more accurate results for both emission and fuel cost which helps in achieving a better optimal solution using trade-offs.