Economic Load Dispatch for Thermal Power Plants using Excel Solver

Abstract

Economic load dispatch (ELD) is a technique used in power system operation to determine the optimal allocation of power generation among available generators to meet the system demand while minimizing the total operating cost. The goal of ELD is to achieve a balance between the demand for electricity and the supply of electricity in the most cost-effective manner. Excel Solver is one of the powerful add-in tools in Microsoft Excel which can be utilized to find global optimum solution for a given optimization problem. It allows users to find the optimal solution to a variety of problems by adjusting specific input variables within certain constraints. In this article, an optimization problem is developed for ELD and Excel Solver is proposed to find the solution. Two case studies viz. 3-unit and 10-unit system are considered and results are obtained using proposed tool. The results show that the proposed tool is effective and user-friendly for solving ELD problem. Overall, this article provides a valuable overview of Excel Solver to solve the ELD problem.