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2011 International Conference on Power Electronics and Engineering Application

An Efficient Cultural Particle Swarm Optimization for

Economic Load Dispatch with Valve-point Effect
Qun Niu, Xiaohai Wang, Zhuo Zhoua
Shanghai Key Laboratory of Power Station Automation Technology,
School of Mechatronic Engineering and Automation, Shanghai University,Shanghai, 200072, China

Abstract
This paper presents a hybrid method by combining cultural algorithm (CA) and particle swarm optimization (PSO) to
solve the economic load dispatch (ELD) problem with valve-points effect. The proposed method is called SCAPSO.
In SCAPSO, a new velocity update strategy is employed to replace the standard one in PSO, which can enlarge the
search space and speed up the convergence. SCAPSO not only has the advantages of PSO, but also utilizes the CA to
increase the diversity of the population so as to improve the global search ability. To verify the performance of the
proposed method, the power system with 40 generating units is tested. Simulation results show the efficiency,
convergence characteristic and robustness of proposed SCAPSO.

2011 Published by Elsevier Ltd. Open access under CC BY-NC-ND license.

Selection and/or peer-review under responsibility of [name organizer]
Keywords: Cultural algorithm, Particle swarm optimization, Economic load dispatch, Valve-point effect.

1. Introduction
Economic load dispatch (ELD) is an important optimization task in power system. The objective of
ELD is to reduce the total power generation cost, while satisfying all unit equality and inequality
constraints [1]. However, the practical ELD with valve-point effect is described as a non-smooth
optimization problem which has complex features with heavy equality and inequality constraints.
Therefore, many conventional methods are not efficient to solve ELD problems since they are sensitive to
initial estimates and easy to converge into the local optimal solution [2].

* Corresponding author. Tel.: +86-21-56334241; fax: +86-21-56334241.

E-mail address: comelycc@gmail.com.

1877-7058 2011 Published by Elsevier Ltd. Open access under CC BY-NC-ND license.
doi:10.1016/j.proeng.2011.11.2589

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In the recent years, ELD problem with valve-point effect has been solved using various meta-heuristic
search algorithms such as evolutionary programming (EP) [3], genetic algorithm (GA) [4], tabu search
(TS) [5], deferential evolution (DE) [6] and Particle swarm optimization (PSO) [7-9].
Cultural algorithm (CA) was first introduced by Robert G. Reynlods in 1994 [10]. CA has been
applied to many optimization problems, including function optimization, scheduling and data mining etc.
Reynolds and Al-Shehri employed cultural algorithm with evolutionary programming to guide decision
tree induction in large database. Knowledge-based cultural algorithms were used to solve nonlinear
constraints optimization problems [11].
Even though many versions of PSO have ability to find a good quality solution, their global search
ability is comparatively weak when compared with other evolutionary optimization methods. Hence to
increase the global search ability, the cultural algorithm based on particle swarm optimization has been
presented (CAPSO) to solve the continuous optimization problems. A cultural cooperative particle swarm
optimization (CCPSO) was proposed for the functional link neural fuzzy network in several predictive
applications [12]. A new cultural particle swarm optimization algorithm with feedback mechanism was
designed to solve economic load dispatch (ELD) problems in power system [13]. In this paper, we
propose a simple cultural algorithm based on particle swarm optimization, namely SCAPSO, to solve the
ELD problem with valve-point effect. SCAPSO can enhance the diversity of swarm as well as
convergence performance.
The reminding sections of this paper are organized as follows. In section two, the ELD modal is
described. In section three, an introduction to CA and SCAPSO is presented. Numerical results are given
in section four. Section 5 includes this paper.
2. Problem Description
The economic load dispatch (ELD) is a complex non-linear sub-problem of the unit commitment
problem. The ELD problem is to find the optimal combination of power generation that minimizing the
total fuel cost while each power unit has to satisfy the system load demand and operation constraints. The
ELD problem can be formulated by the mathematical terms as follows:
n

Minimize

f =Fi ( Pi )

(1)

i=1

Where f is the total generation cost ($/h) and Fi is the total fuel cost of the

i th generator ($/h).

Generally, the fuel cost of the generating units is represented in polynomial function.

Fi ( Pi ) = ai Pi 2 + bi Pi + ci

(2)

The equality and inequality constraints are given as follows:

N

Real power balance constraint:

P=
i =1

ui

PD + PLoss

(3)

Where PD is the total active power demand, PLoss is total active loss of network. PLoss can be calculated
by using B-matrix loss coefficients. It is not considered in this work. Thus, the PLoss = 0 .
Real power generation limit:

Pi min Pi Pi max

(4)

Where Pi min and Pi max are the minimum and maximum operating limits of the i th generator.
To obtain an accurate and practical ELD solution, the valve-point effect is to be considered. The fuel
cost functions of the generation units with valve-point loading contains higher order nonlinearity and

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discontinuity. A recurring rectifying sinusoid is added to the basic quadratic cost as given by:
Fi ( Pi =
) ai Pi 2 + bi Pi + ci + ei sin( f i ( Pi min Pi ))
(5)
Where ai , bi , ci , ei and f i are the fuel cost coefficients of the i th unit with valve-point effect.
3. Proposed Simple Cultural Algorithm with Particle Swarm Optimization
3.1 Cultural Algorithm
Cultural algorithm was first introduced by Robert G. in 1994. The CA is made up with three principal
components: a population space, a belief space and the communication protocol. First, there is a
population component that contains a set of individuals to be evolved. In this paper, the species are
generated by a version of PSO.
Then, the belief space is made up with the knowledge and experience of the individuals. There are five
basic knowledge types: normative knowledge, situational knowledge, domin knowledge, history
knowledge, and topographical knowledge. In this paper, only normative knowledge is used. The
normative knowledge contains the intervals for each domain variable in order to move the new
individuals towards to the good solutions, which can be given as:

NK = N1 , N 2 ," , N D

N i = li ui Li U i

(6)

Where D is the dimension of decision variables, and li and ui are the lower and upper bounds of i th
variable. U i and Li are the values of the fitness function corresponding to the bound li and ui . Then the
normative knowledge is renewed according to the Eq. (7)-(8) under the assumption that the lower bound
of i th particle is affected by j th particle and upper bound is affected by k th particle.

if xtj ,i lit or f ( xtj ,i ) < Lti

if xkt ,i uit or f ( xkt ,t ) < U it
xtj ,i
xkt ,i
t +1
t +1
(7)
=
l=
u

i
i
t
t
l
l
otherwise
otherwise
i
i
t
t
t
t
t

f ( xkt ,i ) if xkt ,i uit or f ( xkt ,i ) < U it

<
f
(
x
)
if
x
l
or
f
(
x
)
L
j ,i
j ,i
i
j ,i
i

t +1
t +1
(8)
=
=
Li
Ui
t
t
otherwise
otherwise
Li
U i
The acceptance function selects individuals which can directly impact the information of current
belief space. The number of the accepted particle can be represented as follows:
=
( p% + p% / t ) * Np
(9)
Where t is current iteration, Np is the size of population.
The belief space can influence the evolutionary operator. The influence function for the SCAPSO
considered here is defined as:
xij ( t ) + abs ( vij ( t + 1) ) xij ( t ) < l j

(10)
xij (=
t + 1) xij ( t ) abs ( vij ( t + 1) ) xij ( t ) > u j

otherwise
xij ( t ) + vij ( t + 1)

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3.2 Modified Cultural Particle Swarm Optimization

In this paper, the previous velocity term in the classical PSO is removed and the new velocity update
strategy in [14] is employed to generate a new swarm. Using the new velocity, particles track the global
history optimal solution and personal history optimal solution. Since the velocity is simpler than the
standard PSO, a new hybrid method of CA and PSO is proposed, namely SCAPSO. In the SCAPSO, the
belief space guides the population space and increases the diversity of population, which can avoid the
local convergence. In return, the population space supplies their elites with the belief space. Though the
dual evolution mechanism and mutual influence of the belief space and population space, the SCAPSO
not only have advantages of PSO, but also utilizes the CA to improve the ability of global search.
In this paper, SCAPSO is extended to solve ELD by modifying velocity vector and making it simple.
The proposed SCAPSO is presented as follows:
Step1: Initialize the population space and belief space according to the limit of each unit.
Step2: Handling the inequality and equality constraint. The details of handling procedure are as
follows:
Step2.1. The amount of power balance is calculatedN by Eq. (11), where df is the difference between
df= PD Pui
(11)
the demand and the total output.
i =1
Step2.2. If df = 0 , go to step3.
Step2.3. If df 0 , the value of df is adjusted by assigning it to a randomly chosen units load so
that the generating constraint is met. If power of units exceeds the boundary constraints, it is modified by
the following express:

Pi ,min
Pi =
Pi ,max

if

Pi < Pi ,min

if

Pi > Pi ,max

(12)

Step3: Evaluate the fitness of each particle in population space.

Step4: Update the particle swarm by means of influence function. The position of each particle is
given by Eq. (10) and the velocity vector is updated as follows:

=
vit +1 c1 * r1 *( pbestit xit ) + c2 * r2 * ( gbest t xit )

(13)

Step5: Adjust position of each particle by step 2.

Step6: Evaluate the fitness of updated particle value.
Step7: Update pbest and gbest.
Step8: Update belief space which gain messages by means of Acceptance function.
Step9: Go back to step 3 until the stop criterion is satisfied.
4. Numerical Results
In order to show the effectiveness of the proposed method, 40 generating units with valve-point effect
is described in this section. The results have been compared with several previously published approaches,
such as EP [3], EP-SQP [9], PSO [9], PSO-SQP [9], MPSO [8], NPSO-LRS [15], GA [16], DE [6], IGAMU [16] and GA-PS-SQP [17]. According to the experiences of a lot of experiments and literature, the
main parameter settings of the methods are given as follows:

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SCAPSO:=
c1 2,=
c2 1.6 , w = 0 ; PSO: c1 = c2 = 2 , w = 0.8 ;

c=
2 , wmax = 0.9 , wmin = 0.4 ;
PSO-w: c=
1
2
The generation is set to 2000 and the population size is 50 for all the three methods. The software is
written in Matlab language and executed on 2.6 GHz, Pentium(R) Dual-core processor, 2 GHz RAM PC.
The case study consists of 40 generating units with quadratic cost functions. The data for the 40
generators are given in [3] and the total demand of the system is 10500MW.
The SCAPSO has been executed 50 times. Table 1 summarizes the comparison results including
minimum costs, maximum costs and mean costs obtained by other methods reported in the recent
literature. The minimum cost achieved by SCAPSO is lower than many other methods except for DE and
GA-PS-SQP. In terms of the mean cost, the proposed method outperforms all the other method except for
DE. Fig. 1 shows the best solutions for 50 trials. For this power system, the SCAPSO performs best.
Among the three PSO strategies, the SCAPSO achieves the minimum and mean generation cost. Fig. 2
illustrates the convergence characteristic of SCAPSO.
Table1. Comparison of results for the 40 generating units
Methods
CEP [3]
FEP [3]
MFEP [3]
IFEP [3]
EP-SQP [9]
PSO [9]
PSO-SQP [9]
MPSO [8]
NPSO-LRS [15]
IGA-MU [16]
DE [6]
GA-PS-SQP [17]
PSO
PSO-w
SCAPSO

Minimum cost
($/h)
123488.29
122679.71
122647.57
122624.35
122323.97
123930.45
122094.67
122252.27
121664.43
121819.25
121416.29
121458.14
122302.32
121870.67
121473.76

Mean cost
($/h)
124793.48
124119.37
123489.74
123382.00
122379.63
124154.49
122245.25

122209.31

121422.72
122039.48
122766.58
122224.78
121755.02
5

1.24

x 10

1.34
SCAPSO
PSO
PSO-w

1.235

x 10

SCAPSO
PSO
PSO-w

1.32
1.3
Cost($)

1.23
1.225
1.22

1.28
1.26
1.24

1.215
1.21

Maximum cost
($/h)
126902.89
127245.59
124356.47
125740.63

122981.59

121431.47

122936.15
122609.94
122201.32

1.22
0

10

20

30

40

Iteration

Fig. 1. Objective function value for the 40 generating units.

50

1.2

500

1000
Number of generation

1500

2000

Fig. 2. Convergence characteristics for 40 generating units.

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5. Conclusion
This paper proposes a novel method based on cultural algorithm (CA) and particle swarm algorithm
(PSO) to solve the economic dispatch problems with valve-point effect. Simulations have been performed
to verify the performance of the proposed SCAPSO over test system with 40 generating units. The
comparison results with other existing relevant approaches show the robustness and proficiency of the
developed method. From the comparative study, it can be concluded that the proposed SCAPSO can be
effectively used to solve the non-smooth constrained ELD problems.
In the future, efforts will be made to incorporate more realistic constraints to the ELD problem
structure and the other optimization problems would be also attempted by the proposed SCAPSO.
Acknowledges
This work is supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (60804052), Chen
Guang project from Shanghai Municipal Education Commission and Shanghai Education Development
Foundation (09CG39), the project of Shanghai Municipal Education commission (12YZ020) and the
projects of Shanghai Science &Technology Community (08160512100 & 08DZ2272400).
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