Genetic Approach to Economic-Environmental Power Dispatch

Abstract The paper proposes a novel two-phase problem structure for scheduling generator outputs in an electric power system to both minimize the cost and reduce the emission of SO 2 The proposed structure tends to reduce large plant level actions such as equipment changes by employing fuel switching as well as dispatch technique to maximize the emission reduction capacity. To further enhance the reliability and robustness of the solution method, a search technique based on genetic algorithms (GAs) is proposed to tackle the problem effectively by taking many aspects into account. To validate the proposed procedures and the algorithm, a dynamic dispatch simulation was carried out on a four generator system under environmental constraint. The solution to the dispatch problem provides not only the real power generation trajectory tracking the time varying load, but also the optimal fuel mixture.