Optimal thermal generating unit commitment: a review

The purpose of economic thermal unit commitment scheduling is to minimize the cost of operation subject to attainment of a certain level of security and reliability. However, in recent years, owing to environmental considerations, operation at absolute minimum cost cannot be the only objective/basis of optimal thermal unit commitment. The environmental effect of thermal power generation is also becoming a major concern in most countries. This paper first introduces the general unit commitment scheduling problem and then discusses various considerations, objective functions and different techniques to solve the problem. A brief critical representative survey of the existing literature available on this topic is presented. Finally, recent trends in research on unit commitment ape also discussed. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.