GENETIC ALGORITHM SOLUTION TO THE ECONOMIC-DISPATCH PROBLEM

Two genetic algorithm (GA) solutions to the economic dispatch problem are presented. An advantage of the GA solutions is that they do not im pose any convexity restrictions on the generator cost functions. Anoth er advantage is that GAs can be very effectively coded to work on para llel machines. Test results with systems of up to 72 generating units with nonconvex cost functions show that both GAs outperform the dynami c programming solution to the economic dispatch problem. Furthermore, the execution time of the second GA solution increases almost linearly with the number of generators.