Heuristics-based evolutionary algorithm for solving unit commitment and dispatch

This paper presents an evolutionary algorithm, guided by heuristics, to solve the unit commitment and dispatch problem in large scale power systems. Unit commitment is a non linear, large scale, and with a varied set of constraints optimization problem for which there exist no exact solution techniques with a reasonable computation time. Problem-specific heuristics have been included to increase the speed of convergence and the efficiency of the algorithm. The initial random population was seeded with good solutions using a priority list method, and a problem specific genetic operator was used. A comparison of results with other solution techniques shows superior results, even on large scale systems.