ECONOMIC DISPATCH AND UNIT COMMITMENT PROBLEM

INTRODUCTION: UNIT COMMMITMENT PROBLEM

Determines the ON/OFF status of the generating units

Unit Commitment Problem with minimum operating cost satisfying constraints (For
example load and reserve of the system).

Sub-problem

Determines the optimal dispatch of the committed

Economic Dispatch Problem generating units considering transmission losses and
limits.

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GENERATOR DISPATCH PROBLEM
 Economic Dispatch

 In power systems, minimizing the operating cost is very important.

 Economic Load Dispatch (ELD) is allocating generation among the committed units to
satisfy the system constraints imposed and minimize the total operating cost.
 Economic Dispatch

Fig.1

INPUT-OUTPUT CURVE

Fig.2 INCREMENTAL COST CURVE

 ECONOMIC DISPATCH PROBLEM OF THERMAL UNITS

 OBJECTIVE FUNCTION
N N  2
Minimize C t   C  P        P  P 
 $/hr (1)
i i  i i i i i
i 1 i 1  
 Equality constraint: Real power balance constraint

N (2)
 Pi  PD  PL
i 1
N N N
PL   Pi Bij Pj   Boi Pi  Boo (3)
where i 1 j 1 i 1

 Inequality constraint : Real power generation limit

Pi min  Pi  Pi max (4)
 UNIT COMMITMENT PROBLEM

 OBJECTIVE FUNCTION
The unit commitment problem can be formulated to minimize the operational cost subject to constraints
such as power balance constraint, generator operating limit constraint, spinning reserve constraints,
minimum up time constraint, must run unit constraint, and must out unit constraint.
 UNIT COMMITMENT PROBLEM

 Constraints

1. Power balance constraint.

2. Generator operating limit constraint.
3. Spinning reserve constraints.
4. Minimum up time constraint.
5. Minimum down time Constraint.
6. Must run unit constraint.
7. Must out unit constraint.
8. Crew Constraint.

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 UNIT COMMITMENT : Unit States

• Committed.

• Not-Committed.
– Shut down.
– Banked.

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 UNIT COMMITMENT PROBLEM

• Spinning Reserve.

• Off Line Reserve.

• Hot Reserve.

• Cold Reserve.
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 UNIT COMMITMENT : Cost associated

• Fuel Cost.

• Start Up Cost.

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 Unit Commitment
• Given load profile
(e.g. values of the load for each hour of a day)
• Given set of units available
• When should each unit be started, stopped and how much
should it generate to meet the load at minimum cost?

? ? ?
Load Profile
G G G
Curse of dimensionality
 Example1
• Unit 1:
• PMin = 250 MW, PMax = 600 MW
• C1 = 510.0 + 7.9 P1 + 0.00172 P12 $/h
• Unit 2:
• PMin = 200 MW, PMax = 400 MW
• C2 = 310.0 + 7.85 P2 + 0.00194 P22 $/h
• Unit 3:
• PMin = 150 MW, PMax = 500 MW
• C3 = 78.0 + 9.56 P3 + 0.00694 P32 $/h
• What combination of units 1, 2 and 3 will produce 550 MW at minimum cost?
• How much should each unit in that combination generate?

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Cost of the various combinations
(PD=550MW)

Unit 1:
PMin = 250 MW
PMax = 600 MW
Unit 2:
PMin = 200 MW
PMax = 400 MW
Unit 3:
PMin = 150 MW
PMax = 500 MW
 Extending for several hours
• Optimal generation schedule for a load
profile
• Decompose the profile into a set of Load
period
• Assume load is constant over each period 1000
• For each time period, which units should
be committed to generate at minimum
500
cost during that period?

Time
0 6 12 18 24
How many combinations are there?
111 • Examples
110 – 3 units: 8 possible states
101 – N units: 2N possible states
100

011

010

001

000

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 How many solutions are there anyway?
• Optimization over a time horizon
divided into intervals
101 101
• A solution is a path linking one
101
100
combination at each interval
100

011

T= 1 2 3 4 5 6
 How many solutions are there anyway?

Optimization over a time horizon

divided into intervals
A solution is a path linking one
combination at each interval
How many such path are there?

T= 1 2 3 4 5 6
 The Curse of Dimensionality
• Example: 5 units, 24 hours
[2n-1]T=6.204*1035 Combinations

• Computational time will be very large.

 UC Solution Methods

• Brute Force technique.

• Priority list methods.
• Dynamic programming.

• Characteristics of a good technique

– Solution close to the optimum
– Reasonable computing time
– Ability to model constraints

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 Brute Force/Exact Enumeration Technique
• All combination of units at each hour are tried.

• Total number of combinations

– [2n-1]T
– n Number of generating units.
– T Number of periods in the schedule horizon.

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 Unit Commitment Example

Pmin Pmax Min Marginal Start-up

Min up No-load cost Initial
Unit down cost cost
(MW) (MW) (h) ($) status
(h) ($/MWh) ($)

A 150 250 3 3 0 10 1,000 ON

B 50 100 2 1 0 12 600 OFF

C 10 50 1 1 0 20 100 OFF

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 Demand Data
Hourly Demand
350
300
250
200
Load
150
100
50
0
1 2 3
Hours

Reserve requirements are not considered

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 Feasible Unit Combinations (States)
Combinations 1 2 3
Pmin Pmax
A B C 150 300 200
1 1 1 210 400
1 1 0 200 350
1 0 1 160 300
1 0 0 150 250
0 1 1 60 150
0 1 0 50 100
0 0 1 10 50
0 0 0 0 0
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 Transitions between feasible combinations
1 2 3
A B C
111
1 1 1
110 110
1 1 0
1 0 1 101
100 101
1 0 0 Initial State
100 100
0 1 1
011

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 Infeasible transitions: Minimum down time of unit A
1 2 3
A B C
111
1 1 1
110
1 1 0
1 0 1
100 101
1 0 0 Initial State

0 1 1
TD TU 011

A 3 3
B 1 2
C 1 1 27
 Infeasible transitions: Minimum up time of unit B
1 2 3
A B C
111
1 1 1
110 110
1 1 0
1 0 1 101
100 101
1 0 0 Initial State
100
0 1 1
TD TU
A 3 3
B 1 2
C 1 1 28
 Feasible transitions
1 2 3
A B C
1 1 1
1 1 0
1 0 1
1 0 0 Initial State

0 1 1

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Calculate Fuel cost for each node by solving ED

4
111

3 7
110 110

101
2 6 101
1
100 100
5
100

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 Economic dispatch
State ON/OFF Status Load PA PB PC Cost
1 100 150 150 0 0 1500
2 101 300 250 0 50 3500
3 110 300 250 50 0 3100
4 111 300 240 50 10 3200
5 100 200 200 0 0 2000
6 101 200 190 0 10 2100
7 110 200 150 50 0 2100
Unit Pmin Pmax Marginal cost
A 150 250 10
B 50 100 12
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C 10 50 20
 Operating costs
1 1 1 4
$3200

1 1 0 3 7
$3100 $2100

1 0 1 2 6
$3500 $2100

1 0 0 1 5
$1500 $2000

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 Start-up costs
1 1 1 4
$3200
$0
1 1 0 $700 3 $0 7
$3100 $600 $2100
$600
1 0 1 2 $0 6
$100 $3500 $2100
$0
1 0 0 $0 1 5
$1500 $2000
Unit Start-up cost

A 1000
B 600
C 100 33
 Optimal solution
1 1 1

1 1 0

1 0 1 2

$7100
1 0 0 1 5

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 STEPS USED IN OBTAINING THE OPTIMAL UC

1. Determine feasible unit combinations in each load interval.

2. Obtain the feasible transition paths.
3. Determine economic dispatch in all states in the feasible states and find the fuel
cost.
4. Calculate total operating cost (Fuel cost +Start-up cost) for each path.
5. The path corresponding to the least operating cost is the optimal.

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 Priority List Method

• A priority list among generators is made and the solution is based on the priority
list.

• Try only a small subset of all combinations

• Can’t guarantee optimality of the solution

• Try to get as close as possible within a reasonable amount of time

• Several Variants.
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 Priority List Method

Key steps.
1. Find out the priority order.
– The full load average production cost for each unit is calculated.
– Allocate priority for each generator.
• The unit having the least full load average production cost is given first
priority and the priority reduces as the full load average production cost
increases.
– List the generators in decreasing priority.

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 Priority List Method

2. List the combination schemes and find out the feasible combinations.
3. Determine the economic dispatch for feasible solutions and select an optimal
solution.

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 Problem
• Determine priority list and find out optimum unit
commitment solution for power demand= 800 MW.
Limits Heat rate Curve coefficients Fuel
Cost
Unit No Min Max αi βi γi Fuel
Cost
1 100 400 600 7 0.006 1.1
2 50 300 400 8 0.01 1.2
3 150 500 500 6 0.008 1.0

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Problem

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Problem

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Problem

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 Dynamic Programming
The Dynamic Programming is a methodical procedure to determine the
plausible outcomes of a given problem which can be multistep.

DP method follows absolute enumeration of feasible alternatives of

schedule and their comparison on the basis of operating costs.

At each state feasible states for the next hour are identified and N Least
cost next states are saved.

Above step is repeated in a recursive code till the last hour is reached.

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Dynamic Programming Method