Integrated Economic and Emission Dispatch of Hybrid Thermal-Photovoltaic Generation

Due to the increasing demand for qualitative electric energy at a competitive price and reduced environmental deterioration, electric power generation systems should be optimally dispatched. In this paper, the Integrated Economic and Emission Dispatch (IEED) of hybrid thermal-photovoltaic power plants using Bat (Chiroptera) Inspired Algorithm (BIA) is presented. The IEED technique entails determining the optimal scheduling of the electricity generating units, to meet the system load, at the lowest possible cost and reduced greenhouse gases emission, subject to network constraints. While thermal power plants are dispatchable, a photovoltaic (PV) system is non-dispatchable. Hence, the solution of the proposed IEED comprises of the optimal real power generation of the thermal units and binary (ON-OFF) states of the PV system. The nonlinearity in the fuel cost function of the generators, valve-point loading effect of the thermal units, and need for faster convergence inform the choice of BIA for the proposed IEED. The proposed method is implemented in MATLAB software, and simulation is performed using IEEE 57-bus systems, with 30 hybrid thermal-PV generating units test system. From the simulation carried out, the proposed method has calculated the optimal solutions, reduced 31.23% and 27.09% of the fuel and emission costs respectively, without violating any system constraints.