Abstract

This paper presents a novel approach population based metaheuristics algorithm known as Quasi Oppositional Passing Vehicle Search (QOPVS) algorithm for solve the Unit commitment problem (UCP) of thermal units in an electrical power system. Passing vehicle search (PVS) algorithm is a population based algorithm which mechanism is inspired by passing vehicles on two-lane rural highways. As algorithms are population based so enables to provide improved solution with integration of powerful techniques. In this article, such a powerful technique named Opposite based learning techniques (OBLT) is integrated with proposed PVS algorithm. OBLT provides enough strength to proposed PVS algorithm to gain a better approximation for both current and opposite population at the same time, as it provide a solution which is more nearer solution from optimal based from starting by checking both solutions. Thermal unit scheduling problem is a nonlinear, non convex, discrete, complex and constrained optimisation problem. To verify the effectiveness of the proposed QOPVS algorithm is applied to some standard benchmark test function and various IEEE test systems with the number of thermal units 5-, 6-, 10-, 20-, and 40-unit in a 24-hour load scheduling horizon. The results show an improvement in the quality of solutions obtained compared with other methods results in the literature. The proposed algorithm is considerably fast and provides feasible nearoptimal solutions. Simulations results have proved the performance of the proposed QOPVS algorithm to solving large UC problems within a faster convergence and reasonable execution time.