DECOMPOSITION APPROACH TO PROBLEM OF UNIT COMMITMENT SCHEDULE FOR HYDROTHERMAL SYSTEMS

A method for determining the unit commitment schedule for hydrothermal systems using extensions of the Benders decomposition approach has been developed. The optimization problem is partitioned into a stochastic nonlinear and pure-integer nonlinear programming problem. The first problem, which represents the simultaneous economic dispatch of thermal and hydraulic power generating units, is solved by a feasible decomposition approach. The model minimizes the total expected costs of start-up and unit operating costs subject to stochastic demand, spinning-reserve, and hydroplant, thermal and unit commitment constraints. Numerical results obtained for a small network are presented.