Optimisation of hourly plants water discharges in hydrothermal scheduling using the flower pollination algorithm

Abstract

Under restructured power systems Gencos may be thermal, hydro or any other generating station bids for the supply of power to feed the forecasted demand. These bids are evaluated and optimised through various optimisation techniques. In this work a Flower Pollination Algorithm is applied to determine the optimal scheduling of power generation in a hydrothermal system. One thermal and four cascaded hydroelectric reservoirs with a nonlinear relationship between net head, water discharge rate and power generation are considered. The various constraints, such as load balancing, power generation constraints, initial and final volume of the water reservoir and water transport delay between the connected reservoirs, have been also considered. The switching probability used to switch between local and global pollination, which affects the performance of FPA, is used for the optimisation of the HTS problem. The optimal price to be paid for the contracted power of the hydrothermal system obtained using the proposed FPA is compared with the prices obtained using other techniques. The supremacy of the proposed method over other normally used techniques is well observed and recognised.

KEYWORDS:

• Economic load dispatch
• particle swarm optimisation
• flower pollination algorithm
• hydro-thermal scheduling

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors .