Evolutionary optimisation for power generation unit loading application

Power generation unit loading optimisation is a practically viable tool for efficiency improvement. The objectives for the coal-fired power generation loading optimisation are to minimize fuel consumption and to minimize emissions for a given load demand. This paper presents two models for this significant industrial application. Depending on the environmental regulation, either a single objective constrained model or a multi-objective constrained model can be chosen in practice. A multi-objective constraint-handling method incorporating the constraint dominance concept via Particle Swarm Optimisation (PSO) algorithm has been adopted for problem solving. The simulation results based on a coal-fired power plant demonstrates the capability, effectiveness and efficiency of using the proposed approach in a large scale industrial application.