Economic Load Dispatch using Moth Flame Optimization (MFO)

This paper shows how economic load dispatch can be executed by the application of Moth flame optimization (MFO). A number of generators in a generating plant produce the required energy for the system load.  It is not economical to distribute this load equally among the generators. Economic load dispatch tends to distribute the load among the generating units in such a way that minimum cost of generation is achieved while maintaining reliability of supply. In this paper, MFO was used to determine the optimal power output of each generator within the plant, which resulted in the minimum cost of fuel required to generate the needed power. This paper investigates a power plant consisting of six generating units.  It shows how a load of 1800 MW was distributed among the generators in order to achieve minimum cost, possible, of generation. Moth flame optimization was applied as the search algorithm to locate the optimal power outputs of the generating units and their respective costs of generation, as well as the minimum generation cost of the entire plant. The optimal powers generated by the six generating units were 245.3896 MW, 276.3117 MW, 407.2338 MW, 276.3117 MW, 375.1506 MW, and 219.6026 MW. These power outputs were deemed optimal because they satisfy the optimization constraints and achieve a minimum generation cost of $24,121.