An Efficient New Hybrid ICA-PSO Approach for Solving Large Scale Non-convex Multi Area Economic Dispatch Problems

Multi-area economic dispatch (MAED) is one of the vital problems in economic operation of interconnected power systems. This paper proposes a novel hybrid approach based on combined imperialist competitive algorithm (ICA) and particle swarm optimization (PSO) methods in order to determine the feasible optimal solution of the non-convex economic dispatch (ED) problem considering valve loading effects. In the proposed algorithm we have defined new type of countries in ICA algorithm, namely independent countries. These types of countries improve their position using a PSO based search strategy. The proposed method benefits from the advantage of the both algorithms. The proposed hybrid approach based on ICA-PSO is applied on different test systems and compared with most of the recent methodologies. Also, a large scale multi-area economic dispatch (MAED) problem is solved using the proposed hybrid approach to minimize total fuel cost in all areas while satisfying power balance constraints, generating limits and tie-line capacity constraints. The results show the effectiveness of the proposed approach and prove that ICA-PSO is applicable for solving the power system economic load dispatch problem, especially in large scale power systems.