Transmission Constraint Filtering in Large-Scale Security-Constrained Unit Commitment

Abstract

When solving the security-constrained unit commitment problem, one of the most complicating factors is handling the large number of transmission constraints, corresponding to both base case and N − 1 line contingency scenarios. Although it is well known that only a few of these constraints need to be enforced, identifying this critical subset of constraints efficiently remains a challenge. In this letter, we propose a novel and simple iterative contingency-screening procedure that is able to eliminate 99.4% of the constraints selected by existing iterative methods, allowing for the solution of much larger-scale problems. We report computational results in realistic instances with up to 6468 buses and 9000 transmission lines. The method was also independently implemented and evaluated at MISO, where it performed faster than alternative methods.