Abstract
The solution to the economic dispatch (ED) problem for power systems allows the power sector to reduce operating costs. However, the ED problem is a complex nonlinear and nonconvex optimization problem whose solution requires powerful algorithms. We propose a new version of the Marine Predator Algorithm (MPA), called IMPA, for solving complex ED problems. The algorithm introduces an asymmetric information exchange (AIE) mechanism, which not only accelerates to escape of local optima but also enriches the diversity of search. In this work, 12 benchmark functions were used to test the performance of the proposed algorithm IMPA. Then, the IMPA was used to solve the ED engineering problem of power system containing of 6, 13, 40, and complex 140 units. The minimum and average costs searched by IMPA are 1657962.7265$/h and 1657962.7265$/h, and they are much lower than the results of the MPA and NMPA, which means that our proposed improved IMPA improves the performance of MPA for solving the economic dispatch problem of large-scale power systems. The results show that the solutions obtained by IMPA are more competitive than those of MPA and NMPA, which provides an additional solution for cost reduction of the power system.