Multi-objective optimization power dispatch based on non-dominated sorting differential evolution

The environmental and economic optimization power dispatch (EED) problem is a nonlinear constrained multi-objective optimization problem with competing objectives for minimizing both emissions and power purchase costs. A new multi-objective optimization algorithm based on the non-dominated sorting differential evolution (NSDE) was proposed to handle the problem. The proposed approach integrated the Pareto non-dominated sorting mechanism with the differential evolution algorithm, and improved the individual crowding mechanism and the mutation strategy to overcome the premature convergence and search bias problems. The fuzzy set theory was employed to extract the best compromise non-dominated solution. The proposed approach has been tested on a 6-unit system. The results demonstrate the capabilities of the proposed approach to generate well-distributed and general Pareto-optimal solutions for the EED problem. The comparison with the classical non-dominated sorting genetic algorithm-II (NSGA-II) demonstrated the superiority of the proposed approach and confirms its potential to solve the multi-objective EED problem. © 2009 Chin. Soc. for Elec. Eng.