Comment by 7thaccount

It depends on the problem. The security contained unit commitment problem (how you figure out which power plants to turn on when) is an unbelievably complex problem that MILP solvers like Gurobi can find globally optimal solutions (within the bounds of the MIP gap) quickly. Sure you could create a genetic algorithm, but there is no guarantee it will give you an answer that isn't stuck in a local minima. That is assuming you can make it run fast. Neural networks are also going to be sub optimal.