A Novel Plant Growth Simulation Algorithm for Nonconvex Economic Load Dispatch Problems

A modified plant growth simulation algorithm (MPGSA) is proposed for solving non-convex economic load dispatch (ELD) problems. It's a novel idea to apply PGSA to non-integer optimization problem since initially the algorithm is used for solving nonlinear integer optimization problems and has shown strong searching ability and good convergence. This paper develops the original PGSA for non-integer ELD problems. A newly designed variable multi-step growing mode containing both extensive and refined growing pattern is applied to improve the solution quality. Multiple termination criterions are established to accelerate convergence speed. Besides simple principle and easy to implement, two unique features of PGSA are that it does not need any external parameters and handles the constraints and objective function separately. The proposed approach has been validated on different test systems and better results are obtained as compared with other published methods. This research is of great significance to power system economic operation and energy saving.