A genetic algorithm to solve the thermal unit commitment problem

344 Int. J. Power and Energy Conversion, Vol. 5, No. 4, 2014 A genetic algorithm to solve the thermal unit commitment problem Yacine Labbi* and Djilani Benattous The Electrical Engineering Department, El-Oued University, P.O. Box 568, 39000, El-Oued, Algeria, Algeria E-mail: [email protected] E-mail: [email protected] *Corresponding author Abstract: In this paper, a genetic algorithm (GA) is proposed to solve the thermal unit commitment (UC) problem. The objective of UC is to determine the optimal generation of the committed units to meet the load demand and spinning reserve at each time interval, such that the overall cost of generation is minimised, while satisfying different operational constraints. The results obtained show that, with the application of the proposed method (GA) to the unit commitment problem, better convergences and solutions are obtained than with other metaheuristic algorithms. Keywords: unit commitment; electrical power generation; genetic algorithm; metaheuristic algorithms; optimisation. Reference to this paper should be made as follows: Labbi, Y. and Benattous, D. (2014) ‘A genetic algorithm to solve the thermal unit commitment problem’, Int. J. Power and Energy Conversion, Vol. 5, No. 4, pp.344–360. Biographical notes: Yacine Labbi received his BS and MS in Electrical Engineering from Biskra University, Algeria, in 2006 and 2009, respectively. He is currently working towards his PhD in Electrical Engineering from Biskra University, Algeria. His research interests include meta-heuristic and nature-inspired algorithms, control and intelligent systems, power system, renewable energy and FACTS modelling. Djilani Benattous received his Engineer degree in Electrotechnics from Polytechnic National Institute Algiers Algeria in 1984. He received his MSc in Power Systems from UMIST England in 1987. In 2000, he received his doctorate d’état (PhD from Batna University Algeria). He is currently an Associate Professor at the El Oued University Algeria in Electrical Engineering. His research interests are in planning and economics of electric energy system, optimisation theory and its applications and he also investigated questions related with electrical drives and process control. He is a member of the VTRS Research Laboratory. Copyright © 2014 Inderscience Enterprises Ltd. View publication stats