## 4 Simulation Studies
### Simulation Studies and Discussion
#### 4.2.4 Results and Finding  
The proposed EC operation is simulated on the mentioned energy grid with 10 power plants and energy demand in different sectors of transportation, agriculture, industrial, residential, commercial, and public. The EC problem is coded in MATLAB and executed on a system with a quad-core 3.3 GHz processor and 8 GB of RAM. Table 2 presents one of the most important outputs of EC i.e., determining the appropriate combination of power plant units to meet the electricity demand. For each hour of operation, different combinations of power plant units are available to meet the electricity demand. However, a combination of units must be chosen that is also economical. According to Table 2, the appropriate combination for the entire 24-h study period is the combination: (2,2,3,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,10,9,6,5,5,5,7,7,7,3,3,3). The value of the objective function based on this combination is 9.0922 million dollars. Table 3 presents the need for energy carriers to meet the total energy demand as another important output of EC. In this table, for each hour of operation, the optimal amount of energy carriers is determined, which also includes the losses of the energy network. For example, in the network studied, 104.1298 BOE of liquid gas, 520.0702 BOE of fuel oil, 634.0488 BOE of gas oil, 235.3108 BOE of kerosene, 602.9689 BOE of gasoline, 32.33808 BOE of plane fuel, 2639.622 BOE of natural gas, 16.21232 BOE of coke gas, and 35.83295 BOE coal are needed to meet the energy demand in the first hour of operation. \begin{table}
\begin{tabular}{c c c c c c c c c c c c c c c c c c c c c c c c c} \hline \hline Hour & 1 & 2 & 3 & 4 & 5 & 6 & 7 & 8 & 9 & 10 & 11 & 12 & 13 & 14 & 15 & 16 & 17 & 18 & 19 & 20 & 21 & 22 & 23 & 24 &
\begin{tabular}{c} Cost \\ (Millions \\ Dollar) \\ \end{tabular} \\ \hline Combination & 2 & 2 & 3 & 3 & 4 & 5 & 6 & 7 & 8 & 9 & 10 & 10 & 9 & 6 & 5 & 5 & 5 & 5 & 7 & 7 & 7 & 3 & 3 & 3 & 9.0922 \\ \hline \hline \end{tabular}
\end{table} 
Table 2: The appropriate combination of units and total cost for energy supply. \begin{table}
\begin{tabular}{c c c c c c c c c c c c c c c c c c c c c c c} \hline \hline Hour & 1 & 2 & 3 & 4 & 5 & 6 & 7 & 8 & 9 & 10 & 11 & 12 & 13 & 14 & 15 & 16 & 17 & 18 & 19 & 20 & 21 & 22 & 23 & 24 &
\begin{tabular}{c} Cost \\ (Millions \\ Dollar) \\ \end{tabular} \\ \hline Combination & 2 & 2 & 3 & 3 & 4 & 5 & 6 & 7 & 8 & 9 & 10 & 10 & 9 & 6 & 5 & 5 & 5 & 5 & 7 & 7 & 7 & 3 & 3 & 3 & 9.0922 \\ \hline \hline \end{tabular}
\end{table} 
Table 3: The need for energy carriers (BOE) to supply the energy demand. BOE: Barrels of Oil Equivalent. Moreover, according to domestic production, the results of the import and export of energy carriers are shown in Table 4. According to this table, petroleum (171,897), fuel oil (8857.3), gas oil (1952.09), kerosene (127.814), and coke gas (39.72) are in the export section, and liquid gas (1055.61), gasoline (877.53), plane fuel (1263.726), natural gas (2964.27), and coal (390.38) are in the import section. Table 5 presents the optimal combination and amount of production of power plant units for each hour of the study period. In fact, this table contains information about the two important outputs of the energy commitment i.e., ED and UC. ED is to determine the most appropriate production pattern of units according to economic and technical constraints.According to this table, it is clear that the mentioned energy network has the peak of energy demand in the 12 th hour of operation. In addition, at the 11 th hour of operation, the amount of electricity demand is such that all units are turned on to supply it. The convergence curve of the performance of FOA in solving the EC problem is shown in Figure 2. This curve is plotted based on the best solution obtained until each iteration in terms of algorithm