Economic heat and power dispatch in modern power system harmony search algorithm versus analytical solution

A comparative meta-heuristic and mathematical optimization approach is addressed in this paper to illustrate the weakness and strength of these optimization techniques in solving a large-scale optimization problem. Harmony Search Algorithm (HSA) is selected as a meta-heuristic and combined CIPLEX with MINOS under Generalized Algebraic Modeling System (GAMS) as mathematical ones. Combined Heat and Power Economic Dispatch (CHP-EDC) is considered in this paper as an aforementioned large-scale optimization task which has a convex nonlinear optimization model. Three types of thermal units are considered co-generation units, electrical only and heat-only units. Two adopted case studies are addressed to compare the meta-heuristic and mathematically optimization algorithm results and a well-defined large-scale case study also presented to illustrate the feasibility and tractability of proposed HSA.