Bee colony optimization for combined heat and power economic dispatch

This paper presents a novel optimization approach to the combined heat and power economic dispatch problem by using bee colony optimization algorithm. The algorithm is a swarm-based algorithm inspired by the food foraging behavior of honey bees. The performance of the proposed algorithm is validated by illustration with a test system. The results of the proposed approach are compared with those of particle swarm optimization, real-coded genetic algorithm and evolutionary programing techniques. From numerical results, it is seen that bee colony optimization based approach is able to provide a better solution at a lesser computational effort. (C) 2011 Published by Elsevier Ltd.