A Novel Heap-Based Optimizer for Scheduling of Large-Scale Combined Heat and Power Economic Dispatch

Cogeneration systems economic dispatch (CSED) provides an optimal scheduling of heat/ power generating units. The CSED aims to minimize the whole fuel cost (WFC) of the cogeneration units taking into consideration their technical and operational limits. Then, the current paper examines the first implementation of dominant bio-inspired metaheuristic called heap-based optimization algorithm (HBOA). The HBOA is powered by an adaptive penalty functions for getting the optimal operating points. The HBOA is inspired from the organization hierarchy, where the mechanism consists of the interaction among the subordinates and their immediate boss, the interaction among the colleagues, and the employee’s self-contribution. Based on the infeasible solutions’ remoteness from the nearest feasible point, HBOA penalizes them with various degrees. Four case studies of the CSED are implemented and analyzed, which comprise of 4, 24, 84 and 96 generating units. The HBOA is proposed to solve CSED problem with consideration of transmission losses and the valve point impacts. An investigation with the recent optimization algorithms, which are supply demand optimization (SDO), jellyfish search optimization algorithm (JFSOA), and marine predators’ optimization algorithm (MPOA), the improved MPOA (IMPOA) and manta ray foraging (MRF), is developed and elaborated. From the obtained results, it is clearly observed that the optimal solutions gained, in terms of WFC, reveal the feasibility, capability, and efficiency of HBOA compared with other optimizers especially for large-scale systems. cas