A New Heuristic Algorithm for Unit Commitment Problem

AbstractLarge scale power systems Unit Commitment (UC) is a complicated, hard limit, mixed integer combinatorial and nonlinear optimization problem with many constraints. This paper presents an innovative and effective solution based on modification of the Harmony Search (HS) Algorithm to solve the strategic planning of Generating unit's commitment. The proposed algorithm is easy in application compared to the other Evolutionary Methods (EM) and has a high capability in reaching to optimal solution with reasonable time. The proposed method is tested using the reported problem data sets. Simulations were down for daily unit commitment. The results are compared with previous reported articles results. Numerical results show the efficiency and improvement of the solution in cost and execution time compared to the results of the other powerful heuristic optimization algorithms