Reliability constrained unit commitment in smart grid environment

Maintaining the reliability in an acceptable level is one of the most important concerns of Independent System Operators (ISOs) in restructured power system. Reliability Constrained Unit Commitment (RCUC) would be executed by ISO in order to reach the reliable operation. Distributed Energy Resources (DERs) as emerging technologies of upcoming power system, could play a determinant role in reliability issues. As a result it is essential to apply some modifications on common RCUC formulation due to the impacts of DERs in order to make the power system operation more reliable, secure and economic. This paper presents a heuristic approach to solve RCUC problem considering the impacts of multiple DERs besides introducing Intelligent Distributed Energy Resources Operator (IDERO). IDEROs are new agents in smart grid environment with the responsibility of coordinating DERs in the most secure and reliable manner. The effectiveness of the proposed approach is illustrated by applying it to IEEE-RTS79. (C) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.