Comparative study for combined economic and emission dispatch problem considering valve point effect

Nowadays, the attention to the problem of environmental pollution is increasing around the world. The problem of Combined Economic and Emission Dispatch (CEED) is a very important issue to minimize the production cost of electrical power in conjunction with reducing the emissions of the power plants while meeting the system constraints. The valve point loading effect is apparent in the fuel cost vs. power production curve as ripples resulting from sharp increase in losses which occur when each steam valve starts to open. The economic and emission dispatch problem considering valve point effect has been discussed in this paper using two efficient optimization methods, Simulated Annealing (SA) algorithm, and Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) algorithm. The classical Lagrange's (LR) method is used to provide a primary solution to be compared with the solutions provided by the two methods. The proposed algorithms are tested on the IEEE 30-bus system with six generating units. Several cases are investigated to test and validate the consistency of detecting optimal or near optimal solution for each objective. The simulation is performed in Matlab environment. A comparison between the three methods is presented.