Mixed Integer Nonlinear Programming-Based Unit Commitment of Conventional Thermal Generators Using Hybrid Evolutionary Algorithms

Abstract

Unit Commitment (UC) discusses the optimized generation resources (to turn on economical generators and turn off expensive generators),which are subjected to satisfy all the operational constraints. The operational constraints such as load balancing, security maximization, minimum up and down time, spinning reserve, and ramp up and down constraints are difficult to satisfy. Although, UC is a cost minimization problem that is realized by committing less expensive units while satisfying the corresponding constraints, and dispatching the committed units economically. The UC problem is an np-hard Mixed Integer Nonlinear Problem (MINLP). Therefore, in this paper, hybrid EA based on a Genetic Algorithm (GA) has been applied to find the optimal solution to the UC problem. Moreover, during the search process, it is very difficult to discard infeasible solutions in EAs. Hence, the Genetic Algorithm (GA) is integrated with the feasibility rule constraint handling technique to emphasize feasible solutions. IEEE RTS Eleven Thermal Generator Standard Test system is used to validate the performance of proposed methods. For the validation and the superiority of the proposed algorithm, simulation results are compared with the classical Lagrangian Relaxation (LR) methods. Results show that the proposed method can find the global optimal solution to the UC problem which is subjected to satisfy all the operational constraints.