Inducing-objective-function-based method for long-term SCUC with energy constraints

An efficient method to solve the long-term security constrained unit commitment (SCUC) is a requisite for power system operators in many countries, particularly those with many coal-fired generating units, which require a long time to start up and shut down. However, the complexity that is introduced by the energy or fuel constraints in the long-term SCUC problem often results in exorbitant computation time. In this paper, a new type of approach, which is termed the inducing-objective-function (IOF)-based method, is proposed. This method significantly improves the computational efficiency. In the proposed method, the inducing factors are introduced into the objective function of the SCUC relaxation problem to induce more UC state variables to satisfy the integrality requirement after several iterations. According to the relaxation solution, the objective function of the original SCUC model is modified. Thus, the process of solving the modified model using the branch-and-cut algorithm can be more efficient. Because the solution of this modified model can be near-optimal for the original model, the gap between the near-optimal and the optimal solution is estimated to decide whether the near-optimal solution is acceptable for practical application. If the near-optimal solution is not acceptable, it will be used as the initial solution to solve the original model. Because the initial solution is of high quality, it can significantly speed up the branch-and-cut process. Two case studies with different scales demonstrate the robustness, the efficiency and the prospect of the proposed method for practical applications. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.