Symbiotic organisms search algorithm for different economic load dispatch problems

Abstract

Economic load dispatch (ELD) is an important topic in engineering management as it is associated with the efficient operation of an electric power generating system. The aim of ELD is to determine the generation dispatch among the thermal units such that the operating cost is minimised. This study presents a novel nature-inspired optimisation method called symbiotic organisms search (SOS) to solve various types of ELD problems. SOS imitates the interaction strategies adopted by organisms to survive in an ecosystem. The proposed method is applied to six different test systems in order to verify its effectiveness and robustness. The simulation results of the proposed SOS algorithm confirm its superiority over other successful optimisation approaches reported in recent literature.