Economic Dispatch With Non-Smooth Objectives—Part II: Dimensional Steepest Decline Method

Economic dispatch (ED) considering valve-point effect, multiple fuel options, prohibited operating zones of generation units is a more accurate model compared to a conventional ED model. It is non-smooth and thus evolutionary algorithms (EAs) are so far the only feasible approaches for the model. In Part II of the paper, a new method, the dimensional steepest decline method (DSD), is proposed for the ED with non-smooth objectives. The DSD is based on the local minimum analysis of the ED problem presented in Part I of the paper. The fuel cost's decline rate between each two adjacent singular points is utilized to find the optimal solutions in a serial sequence. The computational complexity of the DSD is analyzed. The DSD has been applied to solve different types of ED problems on different test systems, including large-scale systems. The simulation results show that DSD can obtain more accurate solutions and consume much less time and its advantage is more obvious on large-scale systems, in comparison with the state-of-art EAs.