Optimal dispatch of combined heat and power generating units with prohibited operating zones using improved heap‐based optimizer

Abstract

In the present market scenario, energy cost has been increased and also restrictions have been faced in fossil fuels energy sources. This leads to evolvement of combined heat and power generating units having higher efficiency as compared to the existing systems. The optimal dispatch of CGUs involves a number of intricate constraints, making it a practical optimization problem. So, an improved heap‐based optimizer algorithm has been implemented in this work for solving optimal dispatch problem by accomplishing a proper balance between initial and final stages of global search and convergence, respectively. This problem provides optimal scheduling of heat and power generating units and seeks to minimize the overall fuel cost supply of combined units considering their operational limits. Here, three test systems, that is, 7‐units, 24‐units and 48 units system have been taken into consideration to verify the performance of proposed IHBO algorithm. The impact of prohibited zones on power dispatch has been analysed for both the system in an electricity market. In addition, the valve‐point loading effect, mutual dependency of produced heat and power of combined units and also transmission power losses in transmission lines have been studied. Comparisons among different methods have been made based on their respective solutions obtained and from that it manifests the robustness and superior performance of the proposed technique. Verification studies showed that impact of prohibited zones on generating units, increases the production cost with respect to without prohibited zones. However the proposed technique yields least production cost among other techniques.