Horse herd optimization algorithm for economic dispatch problems

This article applies the horse herd optimization (HHO) algorithm to convoluted economic dispatch (ED) problems. HHO mimics the social behaviour of horses of different ages using six significant traits: grazing, hierarchy, sociability, imitation, defence mechanism and roam. The efficacy of the HHO method is demonstrated on five different ED problems, namely, valve-point effects, prohibited feasible area, ramp rate limits and multiple fuels. The simulated outcomes of the recommended method are comparable to those obtained by established artificial intelligence methods. Comparative and statistical analyses demonstrate that the proposed HHO algorithm performs well and can produce superior results to some other well-known and established algorithms, namely, differential evolution (DE), success-history based adaptive differential evolution with linear population size reduction (L-SHADE) and covariance matrix adaptation–evolution strategy (CMA-ES).