Multi-Area Economic Dispatch Performance Using Swarm Intelligence Technique Considering Voltage Stability

Economic dispatch is one of the important issues in power system operation and planning. Economic dispatch requires reliable technique to achieve minimal cost; otherwise, a non-optimal solution may cause non-economic electricity generation to the utility. Single area economic dispatch does not make complete electricity generation of the whole system on the electrical transmission network. Thus, multi-area economic dispatch implementation leads to complete consideration for power transmission system. This paper presents multi-area economic dispatch performance using swarm intelligence technique. In this study, swarm intelligence technique, namely the particle swarm optimization technique (PSO) is employed for solving multi-area economic dispatch problems. The algorithm is tested on a 2-area 48-bus power system with different case studies. Variation in active power loading in achieving an optimal solution is also considered in this study. Several trials were taken into consideration to assess the consistency of results. Comparative studies were performed with respect to evolutionary programming (EP) and revealed that PSO yields better results as compared to the EP.