A large scale unit commitment algorithm for systems with radially connected areas

This paper presents centralized control for a wind farm using model predictive control (MPC) method. In order to solve intra-day unit commitment (UC) problem, the UC problem is solved by using the MPC method with short-term wind power forecasting. We introduce a new dynamics model for the UC with some constraints to utilize the benefits of the MPC method. The objective function considering the operation and maintenance costs is formulated by adding a new variable in order to average the operating time of each wind turbine (WT) within the whole time. The proposed method could solve the UC problems on-line using the prediction time horizon that could be selected flexibly considering time horizon based on wind power forecasting errors. From the simulation study using 10 WTs, we observed that the proposed dynamics model of UC effectively provided the optimal solution to each scenario. Numerical study will validate that the proposed method can be applied to solving the UC problem of a large scale wind farm by aggregating WTs.

This paper presents a new approach for the large scale unit commitment problem. The unit commitment (UC) problem plays a major role in the power system since the improvement of commitment schedule results in the reduction of operating cost. However, the unit commitment problem is one of the most difficult optimization problems in the power system, because this problem has many constraints. Moreover search space is vast. To overcome these problems, a new genetic operator based on unit characteristic classification and unit integration technique are proposed. The proposed algorithm was tested on a reported UC problem. From simulation results, better solutions are obtained in comparison with previously reported results. Numerical results for a system up to 100 units are compared to previously reported results.

Several strategies have been proposed to provide quality solutions to the Unit Commitment Problem and increase the potential saving in the power system operation. These include deterministic and stochastic search algorithms. One of the limitations of deterministic approaches is, they suffer from the curse of dimensionality when dealing with the modern power system with large number of generators. Recently evolutionary based search techniques are popularly applied to Unit Commitment Problem which may handle complex non-linear constraints and provide high quality solution. In this paper an attempt has been made to give a detailed survey of the application of the nature and biologically inspired computing techniques in the field of unit commitment problem in last two decades. This literature survey will be very useful to the new researchers working on this area of research.

Several strategies have been proposed to provide quality solutions to the Unit Commitment Problem and increase the potential saving in the power system operation. These include deterministic and stochastic search algorithms. One of the limitations of deterministic approaches is, they suffer from the curse of dimensionality when dealing with the modern power system with large number of generators. Recently evolutionary based search techniques are popularly applied to Unit Commitment Problem which may handle complex non-linear constraints and provide high quality solution. In this paper an attempt has been made to give a detailed survey of the application of the nature and biologically inspired computing techniques in the field of unit commitment problem since past 20 years. This literature survey will be very useful to the new researchers working on this area of research.

A thermal unit commitment (UC) computer program has been used at the Riyadh Energy Control Centre of Saudi Consolidated Electric Company, Central Region, (SCECO Central) since 1982. Since then, system growth, plant aging, turbine degradation, ambient temperature effect on unit output, transmission constraints (line loading), MVAr/voltage control problem at light loads, and stringent operating requirements (spinning reserve, etc.) have imposed many constraints on the program, making it nearly impossible to produce a generation allocation schedule that is acceptable to system operators. A study undertaken to decide what should be done with the UC program and how the operator could be supplied with a daily generation schedule that is sufficiently accurate and practically feasible is described. Because it was not feasible to provide a new unit commitment program or to modify the existing one, it was decided to tailor the unit commitment input dataset such that the constraints are appropriately represented. In addition, it was decided to write a suite of computer programs (UCPROG) in FORTRAN that would process necessary input data and results of the UC program to achieve a more realistic, detailed, but precise unit allocation schedule.< <ETX xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">&gt;</ETX>

This chapter describes and formulates three important problems for the economic management of power systems, namely, the Unit Commitment (UC), the Economic Dispatch (ED), and the Network Constrained Unit Commitment (NCUC) problems. The UC problem determines the commitment of generating units with the aim of minimizing operating costs while supplying the demand and meeting technical and security constraints. Then, once the commitment of generating units is decided, the ED problem determines the actual power output of each generating unit that is needed to supply all demands at minimum cost, while complying with the technical constraints of the transmission network. Finally, if both the commitment of generating units and transmission constraints are considered simultaneously, the resulting problem is known as the NCUC problem. These three problems are mostly considered in electricity markets throughout the US.

Unit commitment is a complex problem which, until now and for real size systems, has been solved using heuristic methods only. This paper proposes a new Lagragian relaxation method, which produces ??-optimal solutions. The flexibility of the algorithm is such that numerous developments can be envisaged, such as simultaneous management of pumping units, probabilistic determination of the spinning reserve, etc.

A fuzzy optimization-based approach to large scale thermal unit commitment

Deterministic methods to evaluate unit commitment and spinning reserve requirements cannot explicitly recognise the stochastic nature of a power system. Probabilistic techniques can, however, be used to incorporate a wide range of stochastic system parameters. The usual techniques of probabilistic unit commitment in an interconnected power system consider the tie-line constraints but not the transmission facilities within the systems. In a real power system, the transmission facilities within the systems have limits and do fail. Units committed from only probabilistic generation studies, therefore, provide optimistic values. In the paper, the usual techniques of unit commitment are extended to calculate a risk value from a composite system point of view. The effect on the risk value of rapid start and hot reserve units are considered.

We present a new formulation to the unit commitment problem suitable for an electric power producer in a deregulated market and consider computationally efficient procedures to solve it. When the option of selling or buying electric power at spot market prices is included in unit commitment decisions, the optimal solution of a UCP with M units under standard operating and load constraints can be obtained by solving M uncoupled sub-problems. We account for the volatility of the spot market price of electricity by using a stochastic model. The model incorporates both the stochastic features of the availabilities of generating units participating in the market and the uncertainty of the aggregate load. We use probabilistic dynamic programming to solve the stochastic optimization problem. We show that for a market of 150 units the unit commitment problem can be accurately solved in a reasonable time by using the normal, Edgeworth, or Monte Carlo approximation methods for estimating the needed probability distributions.

This paper presents a model to include a security constraint for wind power plant in a hydrothermal dispatch problem. The proposed Unit Commitment (UC) is an augmented problem to take into account different scenarios of wind speed during the day. The wind farms are represented by a linear model that the generations are considered proportional to the availability of wind. The proposed optimization model uses DC load flow in which transmission system constraints are included. The hydro plants are considered with constant productivity and the times of starting and stopping of thermal generation units are considered as well as ramp deviation. The results using a test system show that the operation of a hydrothermal system is strongly affected by the inclusion of wind farms.

Decomposition based approaches are recalled from primal and dual point of view. The possibility of building partially disaggregated reduced master problems is investigated. This extends the idea of aggregated-versus-disaggregated formulation to a gradual choice of alternative level of aggregation. Partial aggregation is applied to the linear multicommodity minimum cost flow problem. The possibility of having only partially aggregated bundles opens a wide range of alternatives with different trade-offs between the number of iterations and the required computation for solving it. This trade-off is explored for several sets of instances and the results are compared with the ones obtained by directly solving the natural node-arc formulation. An iterative solution process to the route assignment problem is proposed, based on the well-known Frank Wolfe algorithm. In order to provide a first feasible solution to the Frank Wolfe algorithm, a linear multicommodity min-cost flow problem is solved to optimality by using the decomposition techniques mentioned above. Solutions of this problem are useful for network orientation and design, especially in relation with public transportation systems as the Personal Rapid Transit. A single-commodity robust network design problem is addressed. In this, an undirected graph with edge costs is given together with a discrete set of balance matrices, representing different supply/demand scenarios. The goal is to determine the minimum cost installation of capacities on the edges such that the flow exchange is feasible for every scenario. A set of new instances that are computationally hard for the natural flow formulation are solved by means of a new heuristic algorithm. Finally, an efficient decomposition-based heuristic approach for a large scale stochastic unit commitment problem is presented. The addressed real-world stochastic problem employs at its core a deterministic unit commitment planning model developed by the California Independent System Operator (ISO).

With increased reliance on cyber infrastructure, large scale power networks face new challenges owing to computational scalability. In this paper we focus on developing an asynchronous decentralized solution framework for the Unit Commitment(UC) problem for large scale power networks. We exploit the inherent asynchrony in a region based decomposition arising out of imbalance in regional subproblems to boost computational efficiency. A two phase algorithm is proposed that relies on the convex relaxation and privacy preserving valid inequalities in order to deliver algorithmic improvements. Our algorithm employs a novel interleaved binary mechanism that locally switches from the convex subproblem to its binary counterpart based on consistent local convergent behavior. We develop a high performance computing (HPC) oriented software framework that uses Message Passing Interface (MPI) to drive our benchmark studies. Our simulations performed on the IEEE 3012 bus case are benchmarked against the centralized and a state of the art synchronous decentralized method. The results demonstrate that the asynchronous method improves computational efficiency by a significant amount and provides a competitive solution quality rivaling the benchmark methods.

Sub-hourly Unit Commitment (UC) problems have been suggested as a way to improve power system efficiency. Such problems, however, are much more difficult than hourly UC problems. This is not just because of the increased number of period to consider, but also because of much reduced unit ramping capabilities leading to more complicated convex hulls. As a result, state-of-the-art and practice methods such as branch-and-cut suffer from poor performance. In this paper, our recent Surrogate Absolute-Value Lagrangian Relaxation (SAVLR) method, which overcame major difficulties of standard Lagrangian Relaxation, is enhanced by synergistically incorporating the concept of Ordinal Optimization (OO). By using OO, solving subproblems becomes much faster. Testing of Midcontinent ISO (MISO)’s problem with 15 minutes as the time interval over 36 hours involving about 1,100 units and 15000 virtuals demonstrates that the new method obtains near-optimal solutions efficiently and significantly outperforms branch-and-cut.

A solution to unit commitment problem using fire works algorithm