Dispatch-aware planning for feasible power system operation

Abstract

Maintaining stable energy production with increasing penetration of variable renewable energy requires sufficient flexible generation resources and dispatch algorithms that accommodate renewables’ uncertainty. In this work, we study the feasibility properties of real-time economic dispatch (RTED) algorithms and establish fundamental limits on their performance. We propose a joint methodology for resource procurement and online economic dispatch with guaranteed feasibility. Our algorithm, Feasible Fixed Horizon Control (FFHC) is a regularized form of Receding Horizon Control (RHC) that balances exploitation of good near-term demand predictions with feasibility requirements. Empirical evaluation of FFHC in comparison to the standard RHC on realistic load profiles highlights that FFHC achieves near-optimal performance while ensuring feasibility in high-ramp scenarios where RHC becomes infeasible. • Increasing variability of net demand requires dispatch-aware power system planning. • Offline planning is insufficient to ensure online dispatch feasibility. • Feasible planning algorithm uses affine feedback policies to approximate dispatch. • Online economic dispatch algorithm adapts standard receding horizon control. • Joint algorithm achieves guaranteed feasibility with near-optimal dispatch efficiency.