Genetic algorithm solution to the economic dispatch problem

Two genetic algorithm (GA) solutions to the economic dispatch problem are presented. An advantage of the GA solutions is that they do not impose any convexity restrictions on the generator cost functions. Another advantage is that GAs can be very effectively coded to work on parallel machines. Test results with systems of up to 72 generating units with nonconvex cost functions show that both GAs outperform the dynamic programming solution to the economic dispatch problem. Furthermore, the execution time of the second GA solution increases almost linearly with the number of generators.