Mostafa Ramzanpour - Electric Engineering Department, Science and Research branch, Islamic Azad University Kermanshah, Iran
Hamdi Abdi - Electric Engineering Department, Faculty of Engineering, Razi University, Kermanshah, Iran

Nowadays, economic load dispatch between generation units with least cost involved is one of the most important issues in utilizing power systems. In this paper, a new method i.e. Water Cycle Algorithm (WCA) which is similar to other intelligent algorithm and is based on swarm, is employed in order to solve the economic load dispatch problem between power plants. In order to investigate the effectiveness of the proposed method in solving non-linear cost functions which is composed of the constraint for input steam valve and units with different fuels, a system with 10 units is studied for more accordance with literatures in two modes: one without considering the effect of steam valve and load of 2400, 2500, 2600 and 2700 MW and the other one with considering the effect of steam valve and load of 2700 MW. The results of the paper comparing to the results of the other valid papers show that the proposed algorithm can be used to solve in any kind of economic dispatch problems with proper results.

Economic load dispatch, water cycle algorithm, valve- point effect