Multi area economic dispatch using particle swarm optimization

Multi-area Economic Dispatch (MAED) is an important issue in power system operation and generation which the main aim is to achieve minimal cost. In previous paper, the consideration is only on single area economic dispatch. However, this cannot represent power generation as an overall on transmission network. Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) is used to find optimum cost of generation by considering the constraints such as tie-line limit, area power balance and transmission line losses. In this paper, the algorithm with respect to predicted load demand is tested on a two area network with three set of test data consists of 4 Units, 6 Units and 40 Units system. The proposed methodology to solve MAED problem begins with finding range of area power demands for each area by incorporating the tie line limits. Area with cheaper fuel cost will be selected to export power to area with high demand. In order to design this algorithm, the assumption are no losses in tie-line and fix amount of power flow through the tie-line. Comparison were performed with respect to Genetic Algorithm (GA) and PSO for solving the MAED problem in practical power system. PSO has shown a better result than GA for all the three case studies