Short-term optimal scheduling of hydro-thermal power plants using artificial bee colony algorithm

This research paper reports the implementation of short-term scheduling of hydro-thermal power plants by using an artificial bee colony algorithm. Short-term hydro-thermal scheduling is a type of economic dispatch problem in which thermal power plants are dispatched at the optimized operating point to reduce the fuel cost and to achieve in parallel the maximum cost-benefit from hydel power plants. The power system, considered in this study, is assumed to run optimally and the transmission losses have also been taken into account. The artificial bee colony algorithm proves itself to be most suited for this particular problem as it results in the minimum cost in the shortest time compared with those obtained from previously applied techniques.