Abstract
The aim of the Unit Commitment(UC) problem is to find the optimum scheduling of the total generating units at lower operating costs while achieving the constraints of system and units. The decision variables contain the binary UC variables that characterize the 1/0 cases through the total time intervals in the study era. The scale of this problem grows speedily with great size of the electric power system and longer planning time. Fixing this large scale problem is a challenging process and computationally expensive. It is the most complicated optimization process in the operation and planning of the power system. Meta heuristics methods are capable to outlast the demerits of traditional deterministic methods in solving UC problem. One of the most recent meta heuristics methods is known as Coyote Optimization Algorithm (COA). It is depended on the adaptation attitude of the coyote by the surroundings and the coyote's experiences exchanging. It has a motivating mechanisms to gain a balance between exploitation and exploration. Also, it is very easy in implementation as it has only two control variables. Moreover, its capability to keep larger diversity helps it to get the optimal cost so it is proposed to handle the UC problem in this paper. The election of the schedule and production size are performed by COA. Achievement of COA is examined for two IEEE systems. Outcomes establish that the elected algorithm is supreme to the recorded literature methods in terms of total cost, CPU, percentage reduction, and statistical analysis.
•Coyote optimization algorithm is proposed for unit commitment problem.•The objective function is designed to minimize the total operating costs.•The efficacy of the algorithm is confirmed by the total cost, and computational time.•The percentage reduction of total cost can reach 5.4%.•The stability is proved by the difference between the worst and the best cost.