An efficient chameleon swarm algorithm for economic load dispatch problem

Economic Load Dispatch (ELD) is a complicated and demanding problem for power engineers. ELD relates to the minimization of the economic cost of production, thereby allocating the produced power by each unit in the most possible economic manner. In recent years, emphasis has been laid on minimization of emissions, in addition to cost, resulting in the Combined Economic and Emission Dispatch (CEED) problem. The solutions of the ELD and CEED problems are mostly dominated by metaheuristics. The performance of the Chameleon Swarm Algorithm (CSA) for solving the ELD problem was tested in this work. CSA mimics the hunting and food searching mechanism of chameleons. This algorithm takes into account the dynamics of food hunting of the chameleon on trees, deserts, and near swamps. The performance of the aforementioned algorithm was compared with a number of advanced algorithms in solving the ELD and CEED problems, such as Sine Cosine Algorithm (SCA), Grey Wolf Optimization (GWO), and Earth Worm Algorithm (EWA). The simulated results established the efficacy of the proposed CSA algorithm. The power mismatch factor is the main item in ELD problems. The best value of this factor must tend to nearly zero. The CSA algorithm achieves the best power mismatch values of 3.16 × 10−13, 4.16 × 10−12 and 1.28 × 10−12 for demand loads of 700, 1000, and 1200 MW, respectively, of the ELD problem. The CSA algorithm achieves the best power mismatch values of 6.41 × 10−13, 8.92 × 10−13 and 1.68 × 10−12 for demand loads of 700, 1000, and 1200 MW, respectively, of the CEED problem. Thus, the CSA algorithm was found to be superior to the algorithms compared in this work.