Multi-objective economic emission dispatch considering wind power using evolutionary algorithm based on decomposition

Due to the increasing deterioration of environmental problem, multi-objective Economic Emission Dispatch (EED) problem has become one of the active research areas in recent years. Meanwhile, the renewable energy such as wind energy is an important approach to reduce pollution emissions, as well as the dependence on fossil fuels. In this paper, a newly developed optimization technique, called Multi-Objective Evolutionary Algorithm based on Decomposition (MOEA/D), has been applied to optimize the cost and emission of wind-thermal power system. MOEA/D provides a simple but efficient framework which decomposes a Multi-objective Optimization Problem (MOP) into a number of scalar optimization subproblems and optimizes them simultaneously. The stochastic nature of wind power is modeled by Weibull probability distribution function and the uncertainty of wind power is considered as system constraints with stochastic variables. To validate the effectiveness of the MOEA/D method, it is first applied to solve the traditional EED problem of standard IEEE 30-bus 6-generator system as the benchmark. Then, the effect of wind power penetration on cost and emission is analyzed by MOEA/D in a 6-generator system and a 40-generator system with wind farms based on the proposed EED model. A comparative analysis with other similar optimization methods reveals that the MOEA/D method is able to generate better performance in terms of both solution quality and computational efficiency. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.