Thermal Generation Flexibility With Ramping Costs and Hourly Demand Response in Stochastic Security-Constrained Scheduling of Variable Energy Sources

This paper proposes a stochastic day-ahead scheduling of electric power systems with flexible resources for managing the variability of renewable energy sources (RES). The flexible resources include thermal units with up/down ramping capability, energy storage, and hourly demand response (DR). The Monte Carlo simulation (MCS) is used in this paper for simulating random outages of generation units and transmission lines as well as representing hourly forecast errors of loads and RES. Numerical tests are conducted for a 6-bus system and a modified IEEE 118-bus system and the results demonstrate the benefits of applying demand response as a viable option for managing the RES variability in the least-cost stochastic power system operations.