Algorithm for calculating the analytic solution for economic dispatch with multiple fuel units

The problem of economic dispatch with multiple fuel units has been widely addressed via different techniques using approximate methods due to the exponential complexity of full enumeration in the underlying combinatory problem. A method has recently been outlined by Min et al. (2008), that allows the problem to be solved in an exact way in polynomial time. In this paper, we present an alternative technique and take this idea further, studying and comparing two algorithms of polynomial complexity: basic recurrence and divide‐and‐conquer. Moreover, we provide the exact solution to the problem by Lin and Viviani (1984), that constitutes the traditional test for all approximate methods and present a comprehensive survey of several heuristic approaches.