Comparative Performance of Second Order and Third Order Fuel Cost Functions for the Economic Dispatch Problem by TLBO

This paper compares two different cost functions involved in fuel cost modelling of the Economic Dispatch (ED) problem. A nature inspired Teaching Learning Based Optimization (TLBO) is used to perform economic dispatch for the second and third order cost models and the algorithm fetches the best schedules. Further, economy deviation reveals the need of a model representing the practical generator characteristic. A comparative study has been made on the solutions obtained by TLBO for both cost function models on a 13-unit system with valve point effects and a 26-unit large scale system. The solution evolved is quite encouraging and useful in identifying accurate cost models of units that lead to exact dispatch. The different degrees of performance analysis such as convergence, robustness, standard deviation, epsilon, iter and computation time for the ED has also been presented.