TY - JOUR N2 - Department of Electrical Engineering, Anna University Regional Centre, Coimbatore, India This paper presents a new approach to solve economic load dispatch (ELD) problem in thermal units with non-convex cost functions using differential evolution technique (DE). In practical ELD problem, the fuel cost function is highly non linear due to inclusion of real time constraints such as valve point loading, prohibited operating zones and network transmission losses. This makes the traditional methods fail in finding the optimum solution. The DE algorithm is an evolutionary algorithm with less stochastic approach to problem solving than classical evolutionary algorithms.DE have the potential of simple in structure, fast convergence property and quality of solution. This paper presents a combination of DE and variable neighborhood search (VNS) to improve the quality of solution and convergence speed. Differential evolution (DE) is first introduced to find the locality of the solution, and then VNS is applied to tune the solution. To validate the DE-VNS method, it is applied to four test systems with non-smooth cost functions. The effectiveness of the DE-VNS over other techniques is shown in general. L1 - http://journals.pan.pl/Content/84858/PDF/06_paper.pdf L2 - http://journals.pan.pl/Content/84858 PY - 2013 IS - No 4 December EP - 603 DO - 10.2478/aee-2013-0047 KW - economic load dispatch KW - differential evolution KW - variable neighborhood search KW - prohibited operating zones KW - valve point effect A1 - Jasper, J. A1 - Aruldoss Albert Victoire, T. PB - Polish Academy of Sciences VL - vol. 62 DA - 2013 T1 - Deterministically guided differential evolution for constrained power dispatch with prohibited operating zones SP - 593 UR - http://journals.pan.pl/dlibra/publication/edition/84858 T2 - Archives of Electrical Engineering ER -