FUEL COST MINIMIZATION FOR A THERMAL POWER PLANT USING PSO ALGORITHM

Abstract

This paper experiments the Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) algorithm for solving the fuel cost of a thermal
power plant. The PSO technique is easy to implement and it does not require more computation time. The objective
is to minimize the fuel cost and it is obtained from the total power generated with respect to the proper load
dispatch. So that the overall cost of the thermal power system operation can be reduced. Thermal power plant need
to operate at the minimum cost for better profit, at the same time it should suit the load demand. The minimization
includes various factors like total cost of the system, incremental cost of delivered power, etc. Power losses are
evaluated for the simple test system. A MATLAB program was developed to solve the Economic load dispatch for
a thermal plant with six-units by using PSO algorithm.