An adaptive differential evolutionary algorithm incorporating multiple mutation strategies for the economic load dispatch problem.

As growing the demand for electrical energy, economic load dispatch (ELD) has become one of the most important and complex issues in the operation of power systems. Owing to the confined optimum convergence and the additional constraints, it does not proficient to crack such problems by the predictable optimization algorithms. In this paper, a self-adaptable differential evolution algorithm integrating with multiple mutation strategies (ADE-MMS) is proposed for the ELD problems. In order to improve the exploration and exploitation capabilities of the original differential evolution algorithm (DE), ADE-MMS has three extensions to DE. Firstly, four types of advanced vectors generated by the different methods are employed in the mutation strategies. Secondly, a self-adaptable selection mechanism for the multiple mutation strategies is implemented in the iterations. Thirdly, the main control parameters are updated according to the fitness value under the tolerance threshold. Additionally, an effective repair method is proposed to handle the equality constraints of the ELD problems. ADE-MMS not only improve the convergence speed of the original DE but also keep equilibrium state between the exploration and the exploration. A tolerance threshold for the main control parameters makes the original DE more adaptive. Moreover, the modified equality constraints handling method is benefit to meet the equality constraints and minimize the impact on the algorithm. The performances of four DE algorithms are tested on the ten ELD problems with diverse complexities. Experimental results and comparisons with other recently reported ELD algorithms confirm that ADE-MMS is capable of obtaining excellent and feasible solutions. It reveal that ADE-MMS has good potential to solvating the ELD problems.