Solving short-term cascaded hydrothermal scheduling problem using modified Cuckoo search algorithm

Abstract

This paper presents a modified cuckoo search algorithm (MCSA) for solving short-term cascaded hydrothermal scheduling (ST-CHTS) problem. The short-term cascaded hydrothermal scheduling is to determine the optimal operation for thermal plants and a cascaded reservoir system while satisfying all constraints including electrical constraints of both hydro and thermal plants and hydraulic constraints of reservoirs. The MCSA has been developed by modifying the search strategy via Lévy flights to improve the performance of the conventional cuckoo search algorithm. The proposed method has been widely and successfully applied to many optimization problems in engineering fields; however, this is first time employed to search for the optimal solution of the ST-CHTS problem. The proposed method has been tested on two systems where thermal plants with nonconvex fuel cost function and a cascaded reservoir system are taken into account. The result comparison from the MCSA compared to other methods reported in the literature has revealed that the proposed MCSA is very efficient for solving the ST-CHTS problem.