Flower Pollination Algorithm Applied to the Economic Dispatch Problem with Multiple Fuels and Valve Point Effect

Due to the high importance of economic dispatch in planning and operating electric power systems, new methods have been researched to minimize the costs of power generation. To calculate these costs, the power generation of each thermal unit must be evaluated. When a thermal unit is modelled considering real world constraints, such as multiple fuels and valve point effect, traditional optimization methods are inefficient due to the nature of the cost function. This paper shows a study of a metaheuristic method, based on flower pollination to search for satisfactory results for economic dispatch. The results obtained are compared with results from other authors, with the purpose of evaluating how efficient the technique presented here is.