Multiobjective Optimization of Economic-Environmental Dispatch (EED) Problems Including CO2 Emission

This paper considers the EED problem of a generator system cluster wherein simultaneous quadruple-objective optimization of cost, NOx, SO2 and CO2 emissions is carried out for the first time. The CO2 data is rarely considered in such problems, due to lack of data for generator systems. However, its high concentration and the resultant global warming was deemed to be sufficiently important to include it specifically in the analysis. Further, Almost all studies consider EED optimization for a single value of load demand, rather than the entire load demand range. Here, three (cost, NOx and SO2 emissions) and four (cost and all three emissions) objective optimizations show two principal branches of the Pareto front in the cost-emission plane, a feature that was not revealed before. The paper also shows that by considering even a two-objective EED problem over the entire load demand range, one can rank the effectiveness of the generators over this range. This has been done by introducing a measure called ‘specific objective function’, which is the objective functions per unit power output. The solution of EED problem over the load demand range can readily be useful for generator scheduling of power system operations.