An improved Harris Hawks Optimisation for the Optimal Scheduling of Cascade Pumping Stations

For water-conveyance projects with cascade pumping stations (CPSs), ensuring stable and efficient operation is of paramount importance. This study develops an optimal scheduling model for CPSs, integrated with a one-dimensional hydraulic model, and proposes an optimisation dispatching approach based on an enhanced Harris hawks optimisation (TFHHO). To address HHO's limitations in terms of initial population diversity and exploration, the Tent chaotic map is employed to enhance the quality and distribution of initial solutions, while a starvation rate F is introduced to escape local optima and boost global optimisation. Tests on 23 benchmark functions, TFHHO achieves 15 optimal solutions, confirming its significant superiority over PSO, GA and HHO. Applied to a CPS in Beijing, TFHHO-based optimisation schemes achieve annual operational cost reductions of $5,897 (19.4 m3/s) and $12,640 (20.0 m3/s), outperforming schemes employing PSO, GA and HHO. Thus, TFHHO algorithm provides an effective methodology for the optimal scheduling problem in CPSs.