These smaller consumers usually prefer to purchase at a constant price that is adjusted at most a few times per year. Electricity retailers are in business to bridge the gap between the wholesale market and these smaller consumers. This paper proposes a hybrid approach based on binary imperialist competitive algorithm (BICA) and binary particle swarm optimization (BPSO) to find the optimal energy procurement for electricity retailer with multiple procurement options such as self-generating facility, bilateral contracts and pool market purchase in restructured electricity markets. The solutions of these problems provide adequate information to obtain an energy procurement strategy for retailers. Also, the results of proposed hybrid approach are compared with conventional ICA and PSO methods. Test results show that the proposed hybrid approach is more effective and has higher capability in finding optimum solutions in comparison to ICA and PSO methods. A case study is used to illustrate the efficiency of the proposed hybrid approach.
