A meliorated Harris Hawks optimizer for combinatorial unit commitment problem with photovoltaic applications

Abstract

AbstractConventional unit commitment problem (UCP) consists of thermal generating units and its participation schedule, which is a stimulating and significant responsibility of assigning produced electricity among the committed generating units matter to frequent limitations over a scheduled period view to achieve the least price of power generation. However, modern power system consists of various integrated power generating units including nuclear, thermal, hydro, solar and wind. The scheduling of these generating units in optimal condition is a tedious task and involves lot of uncertainty constraints due to time carrying weather conditions. This difficulties come to be too difficult by growing the scope of electrical power sector day by day, so that UCP has connection with problem in the field of optimization, it has both continuous and binary variables which is the furthermost exciting problem that needs to be solved. In the proposed research, a newly created optimizer, i.e., Harris Hawks optimizer (HHO), has been hybridized with sine–cosine algorithm (SCA) using memetic algorithm approach and named as meliorated Harris Hawks optimizer and it is applied to solve the photovoltaic constrained UCP of electric power system. In this research paper, sine–cosine Algorithm is used for provision of power generation (generating units which contribute in electric power generation for upload) and economic load dispatch (ELD) is completed by Harris Hawks optimizer. The feasibility and efficacy of operation of the hybrid algorithm are verified for small, medium power systems and large system considering renewable energy sources in summer and winter, and the percentage of cost saving for power generation is found. The results for 4 generating units, 5 generating units, 6 generating units, 7 generating units, 10 generating units, 19 generating units, 20 generating units, 40 generating units and 60 generating units are evaluated. The 10 generating units are evaluated with 5% and 10% spinning reserve. The efficacy of the offered optimizer has been verified for several standard benchmark problem including unit commitment problem, and it has been observed that the suggested optimizer is too effective to solve continuous, discrete and nonlinear optimization problems.