Enhanced Strategy for Multi-Area Power Scheduling of Hybrid Renewable and Thermal Power Plants with a Pumped Storage Hydraulic Plant

This paper proposes an enhanced solution methodology for the multi-area economic power dispatch (MAEPD) problem by integrating thermal, wind, solar, and pumped-storage hydraulic (PSH) power plants using the Heat Transfer Search (HTS) algorithm. The proposed MAEPD formulation incorporates practical system constraints, including tie-line power transfer limits, valve point effects of thermal units, operational constraints of PSH units, and uncertainties associated with wind and solar power generation. The HTS algorithm, inspired by physical principles of heat conduction, convection, and radiation, is implemented to determine the optimal power dispatch across interconnected areas. The effectiveness of the proposed approach is validated on two different test cases. Comparative performance analysis with two wellknown optimization methods, Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) and Differential Evolution (DE) demonstrates that the HTS algorithm outperforms DE and PSO in terms of lower operating cost and faster convergence. The suggested HTS-based approach provides a robust and efficient framework for solving the MAEPD problem involving thermal, wind, solar, and PSH plant integration, taking into account the practical limits.