UNIT COMMITMENT

Prepared By :

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 INTRODUCTION
Committing a generating unit
Unequal distribution of industrial load
Problem of unit commitment in electrical
power systems
The problem and methods for its solution –
described in following sections

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UNIT COMMITMENT PROBLEM

It is not economical to run all the units

available all the time
Optimum allocation (commitment) of
generators (units) at each generating station at
various load levels
To determine the units of a plant that should
operate for a particular load– problem of UC
There should be least operating cost
This problem is important for thermal plants

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 CONSTRAINTS
Spinning reserve: It makes up the loss of the most
heavily loaded unit in a given period of time.
 Thermal Unit Constraint:
Minimum Up Time
Minimum down time
Crew constraint
start-up cost
Must-run: Some units are given this status
Fuel constraint

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 SOLUTION METHODS
Lets postulate the following situation:
A loading pattern must be established for M periods
There are N units to commit
Any one unit or a combination of units can supply the
loads.
The total number of combinations to try each hour is
C (N, 1) + C (N, 2) + …+ C (N, N-1) + C (N, N) = 2N–1
C (N, j) is the combination of N items taken j at a time.
Maximum number of possible combinations is (2N-1) M

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The techniques for the solution of the unit
commitment problem are as follows:
Priority-list scheme: the most efficient unit is
loaded first
Dynamic Programming (DP):
Forward DP approach
Backward DP approach
Mixed Integer Linear Programming (MILP)

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Backward DP Approach:
The solution starts at the last interval and proceeds
back the initial point
Fcost(K, I) = Min [Pcost (K, I) + Scost(I, K: J,K+1) +
Fcost(K+1,J)]
where
Fcost (K, I) = minimum total fuel cost
Pcost (K, I) = minimum generation cost
Scost (I, K: J, K+1) = incremental start-up cost.
{J} = set of feasible states in interval K+1.
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Forward DP Approach
The initial conditions are easily specified
Previous history of the unit can be computed at each
stage
Fcost (K, I) = Min [Pcost (K, I) + Scost (K-1, L: K, I) +
Fcost (K-1, L)]
where
Fcost (K, I) =least total cost to arrive at state (K, I)
Pcost (K, I) = production cost for state (K, I).
Scost (K-1, L: K, I) = transition cost for state (K-1, L)
to state (K, I)
where state (K, I) is the Ith combination in hour K.
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 EXAMPLE OF DP
The problem is to find out
the minimum cost from A
to N
At the terminal of each
stage there is a set of
choices of nodes {Xi} to
be chosen
The symbol Va (Xi, Xi+1)
represents the cost of
traversing stage a (=1…
V)

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fI(X1) : Minimum cost for the 1st
stage is obvious :
fI(B) : VI(A, B) = 5.
fI(C) : VI(A, C) = 2.
fI(D) : VI(A, D) = 3.
fII(E)= min [fI(X1) + VII(X1, E)]
{X1}
= min [5+11, 2+8, 3+ ] =10
X1 =B =C =D
fII(F) = min [, 6, 9] = 6, X1 = C
fII(G) = min [, 11, 9] = 9,X1 = D
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(X2) E F G
fII (X2) 10 6 9
Path X0X1 AC AC AD
Tracing back, the path of minimum cost is found as
follows:
Stage {Xi} fi
1 B, C, D 5, 2, 3
2 E, F, G 10, 6, 9
3 H, I, J, K 13, 12, 11, 13
4 L, M 15, 18
5 N 19
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 CONCLUSION
By optimal scheduling of generating units, we
can save time, power and cost
Important for industrial application
Dynamic programming method gives a
reliable solution

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