A Comprehensive Review on Economic Load Dispatch using Evolutionary Approach

Economic Load Dispatch, ELD can be defined as the way of allocating the load level to the generators of the power plant in such a way that the total demand would be supplied in a most economic manner and completely. In a practical power system, the power plants are not located at the same distance from the centre of loads and their fuel costs are different. Also, under normal operating conditions, the generation capacity is more than the total load demand and losses. Thus, there are many options for scheduling generation. In an interconnected power system, the objective is to find the real and reactive power scheduling of each power plant in such a way as to minimize the operating cost. This means that the generator‟s real and reactive powers are allowed to vary within certain limits so as to meet a particular load demand with minimum fuel cost. This is called optimal power flow problem. In this paper, Economic Load Dispatch (ELD) of real power generation is considered. Economic Load Dispatch (ELD) is the scheduling of generators to minimize total operating cost of generator units subjected to equality constraint of power balance within the minimum and maximum operating limits of the generating units. This paper gives a survey of research work covering the concept of economic load dispatch. Economic load dispatch gives the best saving in cost for any power generation plant operation in which the methodology can be applied by various means from conventional to the advanced. In the past years up to 90s, the conventional techniques were used to make this happen but in the past decades AI techniques have fulfilled the requirements with satisfactory results that are being reviewed.