Constrained economic dispatch by deterministic tabu search approach

This paper presents a deterministic tabu search (DTS) algorithm for solving ramp rate constrained economic dispatch (ED) problems for generating units with non-monotonically and monotonically increasing incremental cost (IC) functions. The proposed DTS uses proper tabu list, aspiration level, and reference unit rotation strategy to yield a high-quality solution. The developed DTS is tested on the systems with the number of generating systems in the range of 10 to 80 units over the entire dispatch periods. The obtained solutions are near the optimal solutions of the unconstrained DTS (UDTS) and more economical than those obtained from the micro-genetic algorithm based on migration and merit order loading solutions (MGAM-MOL), the genetic algorithm based on simulated annealing solutions (GA-SA), simulated annealing (SA), genetic algorithm (GA), and merit order loading (MOL) approaches, thereby leading to substantial generator fuel cost savings. Furthermore, DTS can be easily parallelized to compromise the solution quality and computational speed-up for the best performance. Copyright (C) 2004 John Wiley Sons, Ltd.