Economic Dispatch Using Parameter-Setting-Free Harmony Search

Economic dispatch is one of the popular energy system optimization problems. Recently, it has been solved by various phenomenon-mimicking metaheuristic algorithms such as genetic algorithm, tabu search, evolutionary programming, particle swarm optimization, harmony search, honey bee mating optimization, and firefly algorithm. However, those phenomenon-mimicking problems require a tedious and troublesome process of algorithm parameter value setting. Without a proper parameter setting, good results cannot be guaranteed. Thus, this study adopts a newly developed parameter-setting-free technique combined with the harmony search algorithm and applies it to the economic dispatch problem for the first time, obtaining good results. Hopefully more researchers in energy system fields will adopt this user-friendly technique in their own problems in the future