EXPERIMENT No.

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ECONOMIC DISPATCH OF THERMAL GENERATING UNITS
USING ANALYTICAL METHOD
PURPOSE:
To learn
⦁ Mathematical formulation of economic dispatch problem

⦁ Equal incremental cost criteria to solve simplified economic dispatch problem

(without considering generation limits and losses)

SOFTWARE USED:
MATLAB
INTRODUCTION:
Economic Dispatch Problem (EDP)is the process of calculating the generation
allocation to the machines at minimum cost while satisfying the constraints. It is a
generation allocation problem.
The economic dispatch problem mathematically may be defined as:

Where FT is total fuel cost and Fi(Pi) is fuel cost function. The fuel cost functions for
convex systems is given below:

Equal Incremental Cost Criteria states that total cost of generation will be
minimum if all the machines are operating at same incremental cost while satisfying the
constraints. It means that cost for generation of next unit form a point is same for all
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machines.
Analytical method is used to find the value of lambda λ for the Equal Incremental
Cost Criteria to solve EDP. It is a single iteration method for EDP, which gives λ and P i,
for which cost is minimum.
Equal Incremental Cost Criteria:
The working philosophy of this method is that constrained problem can be converted into
an unconstrained problem by forming the Lagrange, or augmented function. Optimum is
obtained by using necessary conditions.

The necessary conditions for constrained local minima of L are the following:

Condition 1:

First condition gives:

or

As

and therefore the condition for optimum dispatch is

or

Condition 2:
Second condition results in

or

For most economical operation, all plants must operate at equal incremental production
cost
while satisfying the equality constraint equation given above:

The relation given above is known as coordination equations. They are function of. An
analytical solution for is given by substituting the values of in equality constraint:

Solving it for gives

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PROCEDURE:
Note:
The problem must be solved by hand and the obtained results must be verified using
MATLAB

The procedure for implementation of equal incremental cost criteria to solve economic
dispatch problem is given below:
⦁ Identify cost coefficients (ai, bi, ci), power demand (Pd) and its constraints from
the given problem.
⦁ Calculate the Lamda (R/MWh) by using following equation:

⦁ Now calculate generation sharing of individual generators using the equation:

⦁ After computing the individual power calculate the individual cost of each
generator by substituting the value of power (obtained in step-3) in the respective
fuel cost equations.

⦁ Calculate total cost of generation by adding up the individual costs as:

⦁ Write down the calculated results in the Table-1.

Now obtained result are verified through MATLAB.
⦁ Open a new M-file in MATLAB.
⦁ Type the following code
MATLAB-Code:

Do it by yourself and ask if any query!

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 ⦁ Write down the MATLAB result in Table-1.
⦁ Compare both the results to verify that the calculated results are in accordance
with MATLAB.

EXERCISE:

The fuel cost functions for three thermal plants in $/h are given by:

Where units of P1, P2 and P3 are in mega watt. The Total load PD is 850 MW, neglecting
the line losses and generation limits, find the optimal dispatch and the total cost $/h using
Analytical Method.

RESULTS:
After compilation of MATLAB program, write down the obtained results in following
table and compare it with the manual calculations:
Table-3.1
Lambda(λ) P1 P2 P3 F1 F2 F3 Total
Cost($/hr)
($/MWhr) (MW) (MW) (MW) ($/hr) ($/hr) ($/hr)
Calculated
Values

MATLAB
results

CONCLUSION:
Analytical method is the mathematical implementation of Equal Incremental Cost
Criteria. It gives one value of λ for which total cost is minimum. It provides an overview
of the ideal operation of thermal units. It is quite simple to perform.

TASK:
After going through the questions and answers related to the experiment, submit a
separate report which should include the analysis of the results of the experiment.

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Teacher / Supervisor’s Signature:
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