Expert Systems with Applications 39 (2012) 2288–2295

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Expert Systems with Applications

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/eswa

An improved self-adaptive PSO technique for short-term hydrothermal scheduling

Ying Wang a, Jianzhong Zhou a,⇑, Chao Zhou b, Yongqiang Wang a, Hui Qin a, Youlin Lu a
a
School of Hydropower & Information Engineering, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan 430074, China
b
School of Control Science & Engineering, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan 430074, China

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Keywords: This paper presents an improved self-adaptive particle swarm optimization algorithm (ISAPSO) to solve
Hydrothermal scheduling hydrothermal scheduling (HS) problem. To overcome the premature convergence of particle swarm opti-
Particle swarm optimization mization (PSO), the evolution direction of each particle is redirected dynamically by adjusting the two
Constraint handling sensitive parameters of PSO in the evolution process. Moreover, a new strategy is proposed to handle
Self-adaptive
the various constraints of HS problem in this paper. The results solved by this proposed strategy can
strictly satisfy the constraints of HS problem. Finally, the feasibility and effectiveness of proposed ISAPSO
algorithm is validated by a test system containing four hydro plants and an equivalent thermal plant. The
results demonstrate that the proposed ISAPSO can get a better solution in both robustness and accuracy
while compared with the other methods reported in this literature.
Ó 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction related control parameters in annealing schedule is difficult and it

Hydrothermal scheduling (HS) problem plays an important role
in power system operation today, which is referred to determine
the discharge of hydro plants and power generation of thermal
plants to minimize the total fuel cost at a schedule horizon while
satisfying various constraints (Dieu & Ongsakul, 2009). In HS prob-
lem, both the power generates of hydro and thermal plants are tak-
ing in consideration to satisfy the power demand constraints,
furthermore, the water balance constraints, the initial and final
volume constraints and the various inequality constraints are also
included, which makes the HS problem a typically large scale non-
linear and non-convex problem.
Recently, many heuristic methods have been successfully ap-
plied to solve the HS problem. Such as: simulated annealing (SA)
(Basu, 2005), differential evolution (DE) (Lu, Zhou, Qin, Li, & Zhang,
2010a; Mandal & Chakraborty, 2008, 2009), particle swarm optimi-
zation (PSO) (Hota, Barisal, & Chakrabarti, 2009; Lu, Sun, & Lu,
2010; Mandal & Chakraborty, 2010), evolutionary programming
(EP) (Basu, 2004; Hota, Chakrabarti, & Chattopadhyay, 1999; Sinha,
Chakrabarti, & Chattopadhyay, 2003) and genetic algorithm (GA)
(Chiang, 2007; Kumar & Naresh, 2007; Orero & Irving, 1998; Sasi-
kala & Ramaswamy, 2010). Although these methods do not always
guarantee the globally optimal solution, a suboptimal (near the
global optimal) can be provided. Due to easy implementation and
good properties in optimization, these algorithms have drawn a
widely attention in the world. However, these algorithms suffer
from some drawbacks when applied to HS problem. For SA, tuning
⇑ Corresponding author.
E-mail address: jz.zhou@hust.edu.cn (J. Zhou).
may be too slow when applied in HS problem. DE and PSO have
demonstrated good properties of fast convergence in optimization
of HS problem, but the drawback of premature degrades their
performance and reduces their global search ability, which makes
a local optimum highly probable. EP and GA can obtain a reason-
able solution occasionally, the main disadvantage of GA and EP
for solving HS problem is slow convergence.
Moreover, each of the methods mentioned above lacks of a
mechanism to deal with the various constraints of HS problem
effectively. Though the tradition penalty function method can be
easily implemented to solve the various constraints of HS problem,
the multiple trials for turning penalty factors will make a high
computation cost. To overcome the drawback of penalty function
method, Qin, Zhou, Lu, Wang, and Zhang (2010) proposed a strat-
egy based on feasible rules to solve the various constraints of HS
problem, this strategy can satisfy the constraints of HS problem
fully, however, the procedure of calculating differences in equality
constraints may make solutions move to the edge of feasible re-
gions, which reduces the searching range of algorithm.
Focus on the drawbacks of the methods mentioned above, an
improved self-adaptive particle swarm optimization algorithm
(ISAPSO) is proposed in this paper. In proposed algorithm, the
two sensitive parameters of PSO, the cognitive and social learning
rates, are changed constantly with the evolution process of algo-
rithm, thus the evolution direction of each particle is adjusted
dynamically during evolution process so as to keep the diversity
of population. What is more, a random adjustment strategy is
proposed in this paper to handle the various constraints of HS
problem. The proposed strategy handles inequality and equality
constraints respectively. Compared with the traditional penalty

0957-4174/$ - see front matter Ó 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.eswa.2011.08.007
 Y. Wang et al. / Expert Systems with Applications 39 (2012) 2288–2295 2289

function method, the proposed strategy did not need multiple run (5) Hydro plant discharge limits
for turning the penalty factors. And the constraints of HS problem Q hj;min 6 Q thj 6 Q hj;max j ¼ 1; 2; . . . ; Nh ; t ¼ 1; 2; . . . ; T ð7Þ
can be handled by proposed strategies without imposing any
restrictions. The proposed ISAPSO algorithm tested by a hydrother- where Qhj,min and Qhj,max are the minimum and the maximum
mal system contains four hydro plants and an equivalent thermal discharge of the j-th hydro plant.
plant. The feasibility and efficiency of proposed ISAPSO are proved (6) Reservoir storage volumes limits
by simulation results. It is found that ISAPSO can get a better solu- V hj;min 6 V thj 6 V hj;max j ¼ 1; 2; . . . ; Nh ; t ¼ 1; 2; . . . ; T ð8Þ
tion in feasible time, compared with the other optimization meth-
ods reported in the literature. where Vhj,min and Vhj,max are the minimum and the maximum
This paper is organized as follows: HS problem is formulated in volumes of the j-th hydro plant.
Section 2. In Section 3, the orginal PSO is described briefly. The pro- (7) Water dynamic balance
posed ISAPSO algorithm for HS problem is described in Section 4. Nj
X ts
The system simulation is given in Section 5. The conclusion is made V thj ¼ V hj
t1
þ Ithj  Q thj þ Q hm mj ð9Þ
in Section 6. m¼1

where Nj is the number of upstream hydro plants directly

above the j-th hydro plant.
2. Problem formulation
(8) Initial and final reservoir storage
2.1. Objective function V 0hj ¼ V hj;ini ; V Thj ¼ V hj;fin ð10Þ
Where Vhj,ini and Vhj,fin are the initial and final reservoir stor-
The main objective of short-term hydrothermal scheduling age of the j-th hydro plant.
problem is to minimize the total fuel cost F while satisfying various
equality and inequality constraints. The objective function for Ns 3. Overview of PSO
generating units with T intervals is formulated by
X
T X
Ns
  Particle swarm optimization (PSO) is proposed by Kennedy and
F ¼ min fi Ptsi ð1Þ Eberhart (1995), which is a simple and powerful heuristic method
t¼1 i¼1 for solving nonlinear, non-differential and multi-modal optimiza-
where t tion problem (Amjady & Soleymanpour, 2010; Mandal, Basu, &
 t  P si is the power output of the i-th thermal plant at interval t.
Chakraborty, 2008). In PSO, each particle represents a potential
fi P si is the fuel cost of the i-th unit at the output of Ptsi , which is cal-
culated by solution to the problem on hand. The algorithm searches the opti-
mal solution in possible space by updating its velocity and position
fi ðPsi Þ ¼ ai þ bi Psi þ ci P 2si ð2Þ of particles repeatedly. The rule of particles updating is described
by Eq. (11) and (12). The algorithm ends while the maximal inter-
where ai, bi, and ci are cost coefficients of generator i.
active number or the precision of solution is achieved.
 
2.2. Constraints v gþ1 g
i;d ¼ x  v i;d þ c 1  RandðÞ  Pbesti;d  xgi;d þ c2
 
(1) Hydro power generation  RandðÞ  Gbestd  xgi;d ð11Þ
For the j-th hydro plant at interval t, power generation is cal-
culated by xgþ1 g gþ1
i;d ¼ xi;d þ v i;d ; i ¼ 1; 2; . . . ; N; d ¼ 1; 2; . . . ; D ð12Þ
 2  2  
Pthj ¼ c1j V thj þ c2j Q thj þ c3j V thj Q thj þ c4j V thj where, w is inertial factor; c1, c2 are the cognitive and social learning
rates factors; xgi;d is the value of the d-th dimension of particle i in
þ c5j Q thj þ c6j ð3Þ iteration g; Rand() is a function which generates stochastic number
in the range of [0, 1]; Pbesti,d is the value of the d-th dimension of the
Where Pthj
is the power output of the j-th hydro plant at inter- i-th particle’s precious best position. Gbestd is the value of the d-th
val t. c1j, c2j, c3j, c4j, c5j and c6j are the coefficients. V thj is the dimension of global best position. D is the dimension of particles.
volume of the j-th hydro plant at interval t. Q thj is the dis-
charge of the j-th hydro plant at interval t.
(2) Real power balance constraint 4. ISAPSO for HS problem

X
Ns Nh
X In this section, the procedure of proposed ISAPSO for solving HS
P tsi þ P thj ¼ PtD ð4Þ
problem is described in details. The main stages of ISAPSO include
i¼1 j¼1
initialization, constraints handling and updating. The procedure of
where PtD
is the total load demand at interval t. Ns and Nh are applying ISAPSO to solve DED problem can be summarized as
the number of thermal and hydro plants. follows.
(3) Thermal plant power operating limits
4.1. Structure of individuals
Psi;min 6 Ptsi 6 Psi;max i ¼ 1; 2; . . . ; Ns ; t ¼ 1; 2; . . . ; T ð5Þ
For an individual P, which consists of N generating units and T
where Psi,min and Psi,max are the minimum and the maximum
intervals, the array of control variable vector is described as
power generation of the i-th thermal plant. 2 3
(4) Hydro plant power operating limits Q 1h1 Q 1h2    Q 1hNh P1s1 P1s2    P1sNs
6 7
6 Q2 Q 2h2    Q 2hNh P2s1 P2s2    P2sNs 7
6 h1 7
Phj;min 6 Pthj 6 Phj;max j ¼ 1; 2; . . . ; Nh ; t ¼ 1; 2; . . . ; T ð6Þ P¼6
6 .
7 ð13Þ
6 .. .. .. .. .. .. .. . 7
4 . . . . . . . 7
.
5
where Phi,min and Phi,max are the minimum and the maximum
Q Th1 Q Th2 . . . Q ThNh PTs1 PTs2    PTsNs
power generation of the j-th hydro plant.
2290 Y. Wang et al. / Expert Systems with Applications 39 (2012) 2288–2295

4.2. Constraints handling current interval with (7) satisfied, the largest volume at last interval
V t1 t1
hj;l arg is compared with Vhj,min. V hj;l arg is calculated by
In the operation of initialization or evolution, the discharges of Nj
X ts
hydro plants and the power generates of thermal plants may not V t1 t t
Q hm mj
hj;l arg ¼ V hj  I hj þ Q hj;max  ð17Þ
satisfy the various constrains of HS problem. The tradition con- m¼1
straints handling strategy for this case is penalty function method, t t
If V t1
hj;l arg is less than V hj;min ; Q hj ¼ Q hj;max , otherwise Q hj ¼ Q hj;min .
in which a penalty function is applied to convert a constrained
In the proposed strategy for inequality constraints, the back-
problem into an unconstraint one. Though the penalty function is
ward and forward operations adjust the discharge repeatedly until
convenient and easy-implemented, the procedure of multiple runs
the inequality constraints for hydro plants is satisfied or the max-
for the fine tuning of penalty factors would make a high computa-
imum trial number Maxcount is reached.
tion cost. Besides, the result of current solution may not always
fully satisfy the different constraints.
4.2.1.2. Handling the equality constraints considering the inequali-
In order to overcome the drawbacks of penalty function method
ties. Combining the Eqs. (9) and (10), we can get the equation
for this problem, a randomness adjustment strategy is proposed in
below
this paper. In the proposed strategy, the constraints of hydro plant
!
and thermal plant are handled respectively. For hydro plant, the X
T X Nj
T X
ts
discharge is firstly adjusted to satisfy the inequality constraints Q thj  V hj;ini  V hj;fin þ Q hm mj ¼0 ð18Þ
of this plant. Then, randomly adjust the discharge of different t¼1 t¼1 m¼1

interval in the feasible region until the equality constraint (10) is Recently, a simple method is proposed by Qin et al. (2010) to handle
satisfied. Considering that the operation of randomness adjust- this equality constraint is to add the difference of equality con-
ment is only taking effect in feasible region, thus the equality con- straint to one interval, which is described by
straints can be satisfied without breaking the inequality
Nj
constraints again. After the constraints of hydro plant are handled, X
T X
ts
X
T

the constraints of thermal plant can be handled similarly by the Q tshj ¼ V hj;ini  V hj;fin þ Q hm mj  Q thj ð19Þ
t¼1 m¼1 t¼1
strategy which is applied in the constraints of hydro plant. t – ts

where ts is a randomly selected interval. If Q ts

hj is in the feasible re-
4.2.1. Constraints for hydro plant
gion, the equality constraint (18) is satisfied, otherwise, randomly
The process of handling the constraints of hydro plants contains
select another interval to adjust. The adjustment operation termi-
handling the inequality constraints, handling the equality con-
nated until the equality constraint is satisfied or the maximum trial
straints considering the inequalities and violation computation.
number is reached. However, in each adjustment of this method, Q ts hj
The flowchart of proposed strategy for handling the constraints
is always adjusted to the side of feasible region if Q ts
hj is not feasible
of hydro plants is shown in Fig. 1.
after each adjustment, which reduces the searching range of algo-
rithm. Focus on this occasion, a random adjustment strategy which
4.2.1.1. Handling the inequality constraints. The volume of reservoir
divides the process of handling the equality constraints into several
at each interval is firstly calculated backwardly by increasing t
steps is proposed in this paper. Firstly, the proposed strategy di-
from 0 to T. During each interval, the discharge of this interval is
vided the difference of (18) into div steps. Then by div times adjust-
adjusted in the feasible region to satisfy the constraints (7) and
ments with the step length of deltah, the equality constraints of
(8). The feasible region for Q thj is described as:
hydro plant can be satisfied. The relation between div and deltah
8 t
< Q hj;min 6 Q hj 6 Q hj;max
> is described by
Nj ð14Þ " !#,
> t P ts XT X Nj
T X
: V hj;min 6 V t1 t
hj þ Ihj  Q hj þ Q hm mj 6 V hj;max deltah ¼ Q thj  V hj;ini  V hj;fin þ
ts
Q hm mj div ð20Þ
m¼1
t¼1 t¼1 m¼1
Sometimes, the feasible region may not exist for the two equations
Before adjusting, the adjustable intervals, in which the discharge is
of (14). In that case, Q thj is adjusted to have the minimum violation
adjusted with deltah will not violate the inequality constraints,
on volumes of current interval with (7) satisfied. In this case, one
must determine first. There should be pay attention that while a
way to define Q thj is to calculate the current largest volume V thj;l arg ,
discharge is adjusted, the volume at current and backward intervals
the volume when Q thj is set equals to Qhj,min.
will also be adjusted. So only both the two constraints (7) and (8)
Nj
X are satisfied, the interval can be adjustable. While the adjustable
ts
V thj;l arg ¼ V t1 t
hj þ Ihj  Q hj;min þ Q hm mj ð15Þ intervals are defined, randomly select one interval trand from it. Fi-
m¼1 nally, adjust the discharge at trand interval with deltah by
If V thj;l arg is less than V hj;min ; Q thj ¼ Q hj;min , otherwise Q thj ¼ Q hj;max .
After adjusting the discharge of different intervals by increasing Q trand
hj ¼ Q trand
hj  deltah ð21Þ
t from 0 to T, the discharges may not meet the inequality con-
straints (14) after this process. To adjust the discharge to satisfy After div times’ adjustment, the proposed strategy can satisfied both
the inequality constraints more probably, the discharge is adjusted the equality and inequality constraints of hydro plants fully.
forwardly similarly by decreasing intervals from T to 0. In this for-
ward adjusting process, the feasible region of Q thj is calculated by 4.2.1.3. Violation computation for hydro plant. If the maximum trial
8 number for inequality is reached or no interval is adjustable in the
t
< Q hj;min 6 Q hj 6 Q hj;max
> equality constraints, the violation for hydro plants will be calcu-
Nj
P ð16Þ lated. The violation value consider the equality and inequality vio-
> ts
: V hj;min 6 V thj  Ithj þ Q thj  Q hm mj 6 V hj;max lations is given by
m¼1
X
T  
Similarly, the feasible region may not exist for the two equations of Violhj ¼ v iolthj þ V Thj  V hj;fin  ð22Þ
(16). So, to make Q thj having the minimum violation on volumes of t¼1
 Y. Wang et al. / Expert Systems with Applications 39 (2012) 2288–2295 2291

Fig. 1. The flowchart of proposed constraints handling strategy for hydro plant.
2292 Y. Wang et al. / Expert Systems with Applications 39 (2012) 2288–2295

t
Where Violhj is the total violation of the j-th hydro plant, v iolhj is the 4.2.3. Total violation
volume violation of the j-th hydro plant at interval t, which is calcu- In proposed strategy, the violation is calculated while current
lated by individual cannot be adjusted to satisfy the various constraints of
8 t HS problem, the total violation including the hydro and thermal
>
> V  V hj;max if V thj > V hj;max
< hj plants violation Viol is given by
t
v iolhj ¼ > 0 if V hj;min P V thj P V hj;max ð23Þ
>
:V Nh
X
 Vt hj;min hj if V hj;min P V thj Viol ¼ Violhj þ k  Viols ð30Þ
j¼0
8
< V hj;ini
> t¼0
where k is a factor. In this paper, k = 0.1.
V thj ¼ t1 t t P Nj
ts ð24Þ
>
: V hj þ Ihj  Q hj þ Q hm mj others
m¼1 4.3. Rules of comparing two individual

where Count is the number of trial for inequality constraints, CountE

In proposed algorithm, each individual contains the fitness va-
is the times of handling the equality constraints, tempV and tempQ
lue and violation value. Traditionally, the penalty function meth-
are variables which are used to judge current interval is adjustable.
ods are applied to select the better individual with multi value
included. To overcome the penalty function method’s drawback
4.2.2. Constraints for thermal plant of multiple turning the factors, some simple feasibility rules based
The real power balance constraint can be transformed as on the rules of (Lu, Zhou, Qin, Wang, & Zhang, 2010b), are applied
Nh
! to the operation of comparing two individuals in this paper. The
X
Ns X
Ptsi  PtD  Pthj ¼0 ð25Þ rule is described as follows.
i¼1 j¼1
(1) For two individuals with different violation values, the smal-
So the proposed strategy for handling constraints of hydro plant can ler violation value one is better
be applied to handle the real power balance constraint similarly. (2) For two individuals with the same violation values, the
The steps of proposed strategy applied for the constraints of ther- smaller fitness value one is better.
mal plants are given as follow.
4.4. Initialization
Step 1: Set current interval t = 1, the number of adjusted steps
CountT = 0. The violation of thermal unit Viols = 0.
The individuals are initialed randomly while satisfying the con-
Step 2: Adjust the power generate of each thermal plant at t
straints (5) and (7), which is given by
interval to feasible horizon by
(
8 t Q thj ¼ Q hj;min þ ðQ hj;max  Q hj;min Þ  RandðÞ
>
> P if Ptsi < Ptsi;min ð31Þ
< si;min Ptsj ¼ Psi;min þ ðPsi;max  P si;min Þ  RandðÞ
P tsi ¼ Ptsi if Ptsi;min 6 Ptsi 6 Ptsi;max ð26Þ
>
>
: Pt if Ptsi > Ptsi;max Then, the proposed constraints handling strategy, which described
si;max
in Section 4.2, is applied to adjust the position of each individual.
Step 3: Divide the difference of (25) into n parts. The step length The velocity of each individual is initialed with 0. Pbesti is initialized
of each piece deltat is calculated by equally to the i-th individual. Gbest is initialed as the best individu-
" Nh
!#, als among the population.
XNs X
deltat ¼ Ptsi  PtD  Pthj n ð27Þ
i¼1 j¼1 4.5. Update and modification

Step 4: Find the thermal unit which are adjustable (For the x-th
In this paper, a new rule of updating the velocity is applied to
thermal unit, if Ptsx is adjusted deltat, and P tsx will not vio-
the procedure of Update and modification, the rule of each particle
late the constraints (5)). If there is no adjustable thermal
updating its velocity is described by
unit exist, turn Step 8, else turn Step 6.    
8 gþ1 g
Step 5: Select one thermal unit randt from the adjustable unit g g g
> v i;t ¼ x  v i;t þ c1  RandðÞ  Pbest i;t  xi;t þ c2  RandðÞ  Gbesti  xi;t
>
>
>
randomly. randt is the number of selected thermal unit. <
x ¼ ðxmax  xmin Þ  ebg þ xmin
Step 6: Adjust the randt-th generating unit with deltat, Ptsrandt ¼ >
>
> c1 ¼ ðd2  d1 Þ  g=MaxGen þ d1
Ptsrandt  deltat. >
:
Step 7: CountT = CountT + 1. c2 ¼ ðd1  d2 Þ  g=MaxGen þ d2
Step 8: If CountT = n, turn Step 9, else turn Step 4. ð32Þ
t
Step 9: Calculate the violation of current interval v iols by where xmax and xmin are initial and final inertia weight factors, b is
 !
X N XNh  a shrink factor, d1 and d2 are constant factors. MaxGen is the maxi-
 s t
v iols ¼  Psi  PD  Phj 
t t t
ð28Þ mum generation number.
i¼1 j¼1 In (32), the two sensitive parameter of PSO c1 and c2 is changed
dynamically during the evolution procedure of proposed algo-
Step 10: If t is the last interval, turn Step11, otherwise, t = t + 1,
rithm. As the suggestion of (Kennedy & Eberhart, 1995), c1 + c2 =
turn Step2.
4. Generally a large c1 make the particles flying to the Pbest more
Step 11: Calculate the sum violation Viol and fitness value of this
probably. Similarly, and a large c2 make the particles flying to the
individual, where Viol is calculated by
Gbest more probably. In the proposed algorithm, d1 is initialed
X
T large than d2, which can make the proposed algorithm searching
Viols ¼ v iolts ð29Þ around Pbest more probably at the earlier stage of the evolution
t¼1
progress and around Gbest at the latter stage. For PSO, a large
Step12: the process of constraints handling is terminated. velocity makes the proposed algorithm explores globally, on the
 Y. Wang et al. / Expert Systems with Applications 39 (2012) 2288–2295 2293

contrary, a small velocity will lead the algorithm searching in a lo-
cal area (Sun & Lu, 2010). So, to adequate the convergence of pro-
posed algorithm, x is initialed with a large value at the beginning
of run, and decreased rapidly in the process of evolution.
After updating and modifying the velocity and position of each
particle, the position of each particle may not satisfy the various
constrains of HS problem. In this case, the constraint handling
strategy referred in Section 4.2 is applied to adjust the position
of individuals.
4.6. Stopping criteria
The proposed algorithm is terminated while the maximum iter-
ation number or the precision of solution is reached. Otherwise,
continue evolution until the terminate condition is reached.
4.7. flow chart of proposed algorithm
The flow chart of proposed ISAPSO is showed in Fig. 2.

5. System simulations

start A test system which contains four cascaded hydro plants and an
equivalent thermal plant s is studied in this section to verify the

initialization
Table 1
Hydro plant data for the test system.

Constraint Handling Plantj 1 2 3 4

c1j 0.001 0.001 0.001 0.001
c2j 0.1 0.1 0.1 0.1
c3j 0.01 0.01 0.01 0.01
Update velocity and position of each particle c4j 0.4 0.38 0.3 0.38
c5j 4 3.5 3 3.8
c6j 30 30 30 30
Vhj,min 80 60 100 70
Constraint Handling
Vhj,max 150 120 240 160
Qhj,min 5 6 10 13
Qhj,max 15 15 30 25
Vhj,ini 100 80 170 120
Update Pbest and Gbest
Vhj,fin 120 70 170 120
Hourly inflow (103 m3/h) 10 8 1 0

Termination condition NO Table 2

is reached The water transportation delay time of test system.

s1,3(h) s2,3(h) s3,4(h)

YES 1 2 2

end

Fig. 2. The flowchart of proposed ISAPSO. Table 3

Load demand for 24 h.

Hour 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
Demand (MW) 190 170 170 190 190 210 230 250
Hour 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16
Demand (MW) 270 310 350 310 350 350 310 290
Hour 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24
Demand (MW) 270 250 230 210 210 210 190 190

Table 4
The parameter of proposed algorithm for this test stem.

Maxcount div k d1 d2 xmax xmin b MaxGen

30 20 0.1 2.8 1.2 0.75 0.35 0.001 1000

Table 5
The parameter of proposed algorithm for this test stem.

Algorithm Thermal plant total cost ($)

Two-phase neural network 154808.5
Augmented Lagrange method 154739
PSO 154705
ISAPSO 154594
Fig. 3. Hydraulic system test network.
2294 Y. Wang et al. / Expert Systems with Applications 39 (2012) 2288–2295

Table 6
The result of best fuel cost obtained by ISAPSO.

Interval(t) Water discharge (103 m3/h) Hydro generation (MW) Thermal generation (MW) Fuel cost Total
Qh1 Qh2 Qh3 Qh4 Ph1 Ph2 Ph3 Ph4 Ps f(Ps) RPh+Ps
1 5 6 21.07 13 23.73 16.76 42.91 45.62 60.99 3469.95 190
2 5 6 19.88 13 24.90 17.30 39.47 41.60 46.72 2558.65 170
3 5 6 18.7 13 26.03 17.84 37.39 44.14 44.60 2440.61 170
4 5 6 18.52 13 27.10 18.38 35.77 46.19 62.56 3582.39 190
5 5 6 17.85 13 28.13 18.90 33.98 47.83 61.17 3482.57 190
6 6.22 6 17.58 13 33.95 19.42 32.43 49.35 74.86 4550.66 210
7 8.28 6 17.41 13 42.24 19.92 31.25 50.63 85.95 5553.49 230
8 9.9 6.69 17.45 13 47.91 22.45 30.71 51.80 97.13 6688.51 250
9 11.21 7.83 17.44 13 51.79 25.92 30.56 52.89 108.85 8012.16 270
10 13.58 9.95 17.66 13 57.46 31.02 31.01 53.94 136.57 11690.75 310
11 15 11.93 18.39 15.01 59.35 34.23 32.42 59.34 164.66 16202.66 350
12 13.35 10.12 18.4 14.3 54.45 29.62 34.36 58.53 133.05 11181.21 310
13 15 11.91 18.84 17.21 56.71 32.23 36.39 64.92 159.76 15358.52 350
14 15 12.43 19.32 18.43 55.06 31.70 38.21 66.98 158.06 15071.85 350
15 13.59 11.26 19.41 18.2 50.77 28.35 40.14 66.78 123.96 9922.53 310
16 12.61 10.82 19.43 18.54 47.56 26.49 41.72 67.53 106.70 7758.96 290
17 11.4 10.27 19.2 18.92 43.96 24.56 42.66 68.25 90.57 6007.63 270
18 10.16 9.55 18.72 19.23 40.39 22.43 43.10 68.76 75.33 4590.29 250
19 8.37 8.87 17.99 19.5 35.22 20.55 42.99 69.05 62.19 3555.99 230
20 6.44 8.11 16.65 19.87 29.32 18.62 41.77 69.22 51.07 2814.68 210
21 6.81 8.58 15.52 20.97 31.51 19.61 40.27 69.61 48.99 2689.92 210
22 6.98 9.68 14.57 22.21 32.90 21.62 38.87 68.96 47.65 2611.55 210
23 6.1 6 13.97 23.19 30.47 12.70 38.07 66.94 41.83 2293.23 190
24 5 6 15.03 24.42 27.10 13.30 40.15 63.67 45.78 2505.86 190

feasibility and efficiency of proposed algorithm for HS problem. In

Fig. 3, the hydraulic system test network is shown. And the detail
data of four hydro plants is shown in Table 1. The water transpor-
tation delay time of test system is given in Table 2. The schedule
horizon T is set with one day which divided into 24 intervals.
The fuel cost coefficients of thermal plant are taken with
ai = 1000, bi = 10 and ci = 0.5. The load demand of this test system
is given in Table 3. The computation was implemented on a per-
sonal computer (Core 2 1.8 GHz) in JAVA. The parameters of pro-
posed algorithm for this test system are shown in Table 4.
The proposed algorithm takes 20 trials to get the final best fuel
cost. And in each trial the population size takes 100. The best sche-
dule results with minimum fuel cost obtained by ISAPSO are
showed in Table 6. In Figs. 6 and 7, the hourly volume of reservoirs
and the discharge of hydro plants are showed respectively.
To validate the feasibility of proposed algorithm, ISAPSO is com-
pared with augmented Lagrangian and two-phase neural network
(Yuan, Cao, Yang, & Yuan, 2008) and PSO for the same test system, Fig. 5. Distribution of thermal cost of each trial.
where PSO is implemented by classic PSO with the proposed con-
straint handling strategy. The corresponding results are shown in

Fig. 4. Convergence progress of PSO and ISAPSO for this test system. Fig. 6. Reservoir storage volumes for this test system.
 Y. Wang et al. / Expert Systems with Applications 39 (2012) 2288–2295
Fig. 7. Hourly hydro plant discharge.
Table 5. It clear that he proposed ISAPSO obtained the best fuel cost
than the other methods mentioned above for this test system.
The efficiency of ISAPSO and PSO is also compared in this paper.
From the convergence progress curves shown in Fig. 4, we can eas-
ily find that proposed ISAPSO have better convergence perfor-
mance than PSO. The quality of solutions is also compared
between ISAPSO and PSO by running 20 trials. The comparison re-
sults are shown in Fig. 5. It demonstrates that the result obtained
by ISAPSO variation in a small range with trial numbers.
6. Conclusions
In this paper, we proposed an improved self-adaptive particle
swarm optimization algorithm (ISAPSO) to solve short-term hydro-
thermal scheduling problem. A dynamic adjustment on the two
sensitive parameters of PSO is imported to control the searching
direction of each particle. Additionally, focus on the drawback of
tradition method on constraints handling, a randomness adjust-
ment strategy is proposed to handle the various constraints of HS
effectively. Especially, the proposed strategy can satisfy make the
individual fully satisfying the various constraints of HS problem.
Finally, the feasibility and effectiveness of the proposed method
is verified by a test system which contains four hydro plants and
one equivalent thermal plant. The experiment results show that
the proposed ISAPSO can obtain better result with lower total fuel
cost along with fast convergence performance in solving HS prob-
lem compared with other algorithms. So it can be a good and effec-
tive approach for HS problem.
Acknowledgements
This work is granted by Key Projects in the National Science &
Technology Pillar Program (No. 2008BAB29B08), Special Research
Foundation for PHD (No. 20100142110012), Special Research
Foundation for the Public Welfare Industry of the Ministry of
Science and Technology and the Ministry of Water Resources
2295
(No. 200701008) and the projects of Natural Science Foundation
of China (No. 50539140).
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