Interval-based differential evolution approach for combined economic emission load dispatch

In this paper we propose an Interval based Differential Evolution (IDE) algorithm, an improved version of Differential Evolution (DE) algorithm using interval arithmetic. After estimating the global minimum roughly, the IDE algorithm constructs a mechanism which updates the upper bound of global minimum at each generation and defines an efficient termination criterion. Also at each generation it modifies the new population using the subset of current population and thus reduces the computational effort. We apply the proposed algorithm to the Combined Economic Emission Load Dispatch (CEELD) problem which obtains the optimal amount of generated power for the thermal generating units in the system by simultaneously minimising the fuel and emission costs. We find the proposed algorithm to be more efficient than the conventional DE when applied to IEEE 6 generators system. We also find that these results using the IDE algorithm are better than some recently reported evolutionary algorithms.