Differential Evolution Algorithm Based on State Transition of Specific Individuals for Economic Dispatch Problems with Valve Point Effects

Economic Dispatch problem with valve-point effects is a complex solution problem involving the practical constraints of equality and inequality. The paper proposes a differential evolution algorithm based on specific individuals of state transition to solve small, medium and large-economic dispatch problems with valve-point effects. The core of DE-STA is to use the state transition to update specific individuals after a differential evolution of the population, which improves the optimization efficiency, robustness and accuracy of the algorithm. Moreover, a new state operator of translation transformation is adopted to improve efficiency of state transition, which introduces individuals of information exchange. Compared with the traditional DE and other algorithms, better robustness, faster convergence speed and accuracy results of the DE-STA are demonstrated by solving small, medium and large-economic dispatch problems with valve-point effects related to 13-, 40- and 140-unit test system.