Abstract—This paper presents a simple methodology for solving economic dispatch problems with multiple fuel options. The problem has been solved in two stages. In the first stage, the most economic fuel of each unit is identified and in the second stage Economic Load Dispatch (ELD) for the selected fuels is performed. The Composite Cost Function (CCF) is used to identify the most economical fuel and the feasible operating region of each unit. With these details, Sequential Approach with Matrix Framework (SAMF) is performed to determine the optimal dispatch of each unit. The effectiveness of the proposed methodology is tested with a standard ten unit system. Numerical simulation results indicate that the proposed methodology has close agreement with recent reports.

Index Terms—Composite cost function, economic load dispatch, piecewise quadratic cost function, sequential approach.

S. Subramanian is with the Department of Electrical Engineering, Annamalai University, Annamalainagar, Tamilnadu, India. (e-mail: dr_smani@yahoo.co.in).
S. Ganesan is with the Department of Electrical Engineering, Annamalai University, Annamalainagar, Tamilnadu, India. (e-mail: ganeshshriraj@gmail.com).

Cite: S. Subramanian and S. Ganesan, "A Simplified Approach for Economic Dispatch with Piecewise Quadratic Cost Functions," International Journal of Computer and Electrical Engineering vol. 2, no. 5, pp. 793-798, 2010.