Hybrid ABC-bat for solving short-term hydrothermal scheduling problems

Abstract

The main objective of short-term hydrothermal scheduling is the optimal allocation of the hydro and thermal generating units, so that the total cost of thermal plants can be minimized. The time of operation of the functioning units are considered to be 24 h. To achieve this objective, the hybrid algorithm combination of Artificial Bee Colony (ABC) and the BAT algorithm were applied. The swarming behavior of the algorithm searches the food source for which the objective function of the cost is to be considered; here, we have used two search algorithms, one to optimize the cost function, and another to improve the performance of the system. In the present work, the optimum scheduling of hydro and thermal units is proposed, where these units are acting as a relay unit. The short term hydrothermal scheduling problem was tested in a Chilean system, and confirmed by comparison with other hybrid techniques such as Artificial Bee Colony–Quantum Evolutionary and Artificial Bee Colony–Particle Swarm Optimization. The efficiency of the proposed hybrid algorithm is established by comparing it to these two hybrid algorithms.