A hybrid butterfly algorithm in the optimal economic operation of microgrids

With the increasing capacity of renewable energy generators, microgrid (MG) systems have experienced rapid development, and the optimal economic operation is one of the most important and challenging issues in the MG field. To reduce the overall generation cost of microgrids, a hybrid butterfly algorithm (HBOA) is proposed to address the optimal economic operation problem in MG systems. This algorithm uses adaptive switching thresholds to balance the global exploration capability and local exploitation capability of the algorithm. It introduces a diversity learning mechanism to enhance information exchange among populations to improve the algorithm's accuracy and proposes an elite-guided guidance strategy to accelerate the convergence speed of the algorithm. Numerical simulation experiments on 10 standard test functions validate that the HBOA algorithm has higher optimization accuracy and faster convergence speed. Simulation experiments are conducted on two operation modes of microgrids: Islanded and grid-connected, and compared with other algorithms. In islanded and grid-connected modes, HBOA can reduce operating costs by up to 11.7% and 17.7%, respectively. The experimental results confirm the applicability and superiority of the proposed algorithm for solving the optimal economic operation problem in microgrids.