Direct search method for solving economic dispatch problem considering transmission capacity constraints

This paper develops an efficient and practical approach for solving the economic dispatch (ED) problem considering transmission capacity constraints. Direct search method (DSM) is chosen to handle a number of inequality and equality constraints and units with any kind of fuel costs functions. For improving the performance of direct search procedure, a novel strategy with multi-level convergence is incorporated in the DSM to minimize the number of total iterations in the searching process. The validity, robustness, and effectiveness of the proposed approach is verified through numerical experiments for extended economic dispatch application.