Lightning flash algorithm for solving non‐convex combined emission economic dispatch with generator constraints

Abstract

Due to the importance of global warming and environmental impacts that accumulated from emission of gaseous pollutants of fossil‐fuelled power plants, the modern combined emission economic dispatch (CEED) is applied. This study proposes a new evolutionary lightning flash algorithm to solve dual‐objective CEED problem considering different scenarios with wind power penetration, multiple fuel options and operation constraints on the generators. The lightning flash algorithm is formulated based on the movements of the cloud to ground lightning strikes in a thunderstorm. This method is tested on 11 benchmark functions and then it is applied on six different practical case study systems for solving non‐convex CEED. The results of LFA on benchmark functions and the case study systems are compared with other methods and confirm the effectiveness and applicability of the proposed method with higher quality solution, less emission, less costs and better convergence against other methods for solving non‐convex practical economic dispatch, CEED and dynamic dispatch problems.