A novel short-term generation scheduling technique of thermal units using ant colony search algorithms

This paper presents a novel co-operative agents approach, ant colony search algorithm (ACSA)based scheme, for solving a short-term generation scheduli ng problem of thermal power systems. The main purpose of this paper is to i nvestigate the applicability of an alternative intelligent search method in power system optimisation, particularly in short-term generation schedulin g problems. The ACSA is derived from the theoretical biology of the topic o f ant trail formation and foraging methods. A. set of co-operating agents, ants, co-operate to find a good solution for the short-term generation sche duling problem of thermal units. In the ACSA, the state transition rule, gl obal and local updating rules are also introduced to ensure the optimal sol ution. Once all the ants have completed their tours, a global pheromone-upd ating rule is then applied and the process is iterated until the stop condi tion is satisfied. The effectiveness of the proposed scheme has been demons trated on the daily generation scheduling problem of model power systems. ( C) 2001 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.