Economic dispatch of power and heat considering the environmental pollutants and operational constraints of power plants with the multi-objective harmony search algorithm (MOHS)

Abstract: In traditional generation systems, energy from fuel is simply converted into electrical energy, while in the combined heat and power (CHP) systems, fuel energy, in addition to generating electricity, also generates thermal energy. Therefore, the efficiency of these systems is considerably higher than traditional systems, and this justifies the need for CHP systems. The emergence of CHP systems alongside fossil fuels power plants makes the economic dispatch of power and heat between the energy generating units with the lowest cost one of the important issues of power systems utilization. In this regard, the need to consider emissions from energy generating units along with other operational constraints of power plants complicates the economic dispatch. The presence of multiple objective functions, and in some cases opposites, transforms the above problem into a multi-objective optimization problem. This paper, while investigating the problem of economic dispatch of load in power plants along with the CHP and heat generating units, uses the meta-heuristic method of multi-objective harmony search algorithm (MOHS) in solving the problem of economic power and heat dispatch. To demonstrate the efficiency of the proposed method, a system with 4 units of electric power generation, 2 units of CHP and one unit of heat generation is used. The performance of the proposed algorithm is shown by comparing with other advanced multi-objective optimization methods such as NSGA-II and MOPSO.