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Unit Commitment with Economic Dispatch

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International Electrical Engineering Journal (IEEJ)
Vol. 6 (2015) No.5, pp. 1913-1916
ISSN 2078-2365
http://www.ieejournal.com/
Unit Commitment with Economic Dispatch
M.S.Krishnarayalu
Department of Electrical and Electronics Engineering,
V.R Siddhartha Engineering College, Vijayawada, AP, 520007, India.
mskr@vrsiddhartha.ac.in
Abstract Economic Dispatch (ED) in power systems
is very important as it saves lot of money. There are two
basic methods available. One is classical method where
all units are committed and consumption of fuel is
optimized by an optimization method. Second one is
Unit Commitment (UC) method. In UC, units are
committed based on their efficiency order and on load
demand with most efficient unit committed first. Now a
method called Unit Commitment with Economic
Dispatch (UCED) is proposed combining these two
methods. The efficacy of this new method is illustrated
via a three unit thermal plant system.
Index Terms Fuel cost, Optimization, Economic
Dispatch, Unit Commitment
Terminology:
H Heat input, MBtu/h
h Hour
F Fuel cost, `/h
` Indian Rupees
TFC Total fuel cost, `/h
IFC Incremental fuel cost, `/MWh
IFC of power system, `/MWh
dFj/dPj IFC of unit j, `/MWh
Lj Penalty factor of unit j
UC Unit Commitment
ED Economic Dispatch
Krishnarayalu
I. INTRODUCTION
Economic Dispatch of power is one of the most
important problems of power systems [1-9]. It is
mainly tackled by two methods. Method one gives
optimal power generation required to meet the load
demand PD, with minimum total fuel cost, through a
coordination equation. This is known as classical ED.
In this method all units are turned on to meet the PD.
The second method is Unit Commitment (UC). Here
the most efficient unit is committed first followed by
next efficient unit and so on. Here all units need not
be committed. All units may be demanded
(committed) only for large peak loads. There are
many methods of UC are available in literature.
However no UC solution is perfect. They have
certain strengths and some weaknesses [5]. In this
paper a new approach is presented mixing the ED and
UC methods.
II. BASIC METHODS
Here we discuss the two basic methods of economic
dispatch namely Classical Economic Dispatch and
Unit Commitment.
Classical Economic Dispatch: This method
minimizes total fuel cost (TFC) using Lagrange
method resulting in a coordination equation that gives
rise to optimum generations that minimize TFC. The
objective is scheduling the output of each plant/unit
such that the total fuel cost of all the plants/units is
minimum for a given load demand PD.
N = number of plants/units
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Unit Commitment with Economic Dispatch
International Electrical Engineering Journal (IEEJ)
Vol. 6 (2015) No.5, pp. 1913-1916
ISSN 2078-2365
http://www.ieejournal.com/

TFC = F1+ F2++ FN= =1 (1) Determination of units of a plant that should
F1, F2,,FN - fuel cost of individual plants/units operate for a particular load
PT = total power input to the network from all UC is important for thermal power plants
plants/units than other types of plants such as hydro (the
= P1+ P2++ PN= =1 (2) operating cost and start-up times for hydro
P1, P2,,PN - power outputs of individual plants are negligible).
plants/units
PD = total power demanded by the loads of the entire Constraints in UC: Many constraints like online and
system offline reserves, minimum up time, minimum down
PL = total transmission loss time, crew constraints, maintenance constraints are
Hence to be considered in UC for committing and
= PD + PL- =1 = 0 (3) decommitting of units.
is the equality constraint for optimization.
L = FT + = Lagrange function The UC problem can be very difficult. Let us
= augmented cost function (4) consider the following situation.
1) It is required to establish a loading pattern
- a constant called Lagrangian multiplier
for M intervals per day. Then M will be 24
For minimum FT, L/Pj = 0, j for one hour interval.
This results in = (dFj/dPj) / [1- (PL /Pj)], 2) There are N units to commit and dispatch.
= Lj (dFj/dPj), `/MWh 3) Any one unit can supply the total load
demand PD. Also any combination of units
j = 1, N. (5) can also supply the PD.
(5) is the coordination equation for finding optimum For the total period of M intervals, the maximum no.
generation schedules that minimize TFC. of possible combinations is (2N-1)M which can be a
Lj= 1/[1- (PL /Pj)] very large number. For N=20, (2 N-1)24 =3.12 x10144,
= penalty factor for plant j indicates the difficulty of UC.
= 1 if transmission losses were neglected (zero).
Some approaches of UC
If transmission losses are included Lj will be more Priority List method: A simple approach to
(penalty) and IFC of the power system will be high. the problem is to apply priority ordering
If maximum and minimum generations are specified (most efficient plant/unit is loaded first and
for each unit, some units will be unable to operate at so on). Efficiency of units may be
the same IFC as others. Then determined from full load average
dFj/dPj , Pj = Pjmin production costs of units.
Optimal approach using Dynamic
dFj/dPj=, Pjmin<Pj<Pjmax programming
dFj/dPj , Pj = Pjmax (6) Lagrange Relaxation method
Mixed Integer Programming
Unit Commitment:
To commit a generating unit is to turn it on. That is III. UNIT COMMITMENT WITH
to bring the unit up to rated speed, synchronize it to ECONOMIC DISPATCH (UCED)
the system so that it can deliver power to the
network. A great deal of money (fuel) can be saved Here a method named Unit Commitment with
by turning the units off (decommitting) when they Economic Dispatch (UCED) is proposed combining
are not needed. The salient points of UC are the basic principles of Economic Dispatch and Unit
It is not economical to run all the units Commitment methods. Firstly list out the units
available all the time. according to their efficiency. Initially the most
1914
Krishnarayalu Unit Commitment with Economic Dispatch
International Electrical Engineering Journal (IEEJ)
Vol. 6 (2015) No.5, pp. 1913-1916
ISSN 2078-2365
http://www.ieejournal.com/

efficient unit is committed as in UC. Continue Table 3 : Unit Efficiency Order

loading this unit till maximum generation according
to PD. If PD is more than maximum generation limit Unit IFC = dF/dP IFC at Full Efficiency
of this unit, commit the next most efficient unit. Now `/MWh Load Order
using the coordination equation (5) determine the `/MWh
optimum generations of these two units for the P D.
Continue this process by committing next efficient 1 79.2+0.03124P1 97.94 2
unit as PD increases further. Also continue to find 2 78.5+0.0194P2 94.02 1
optimum generations using the coordination equation 3 95.64+0.11568P3 118.78 3
(5). Here computations are unique. Firstly the most
efficient unit is committed. Accordingly P D is
supplied by this unit till its maximum generation Load demand PD varies from 300 MW to 1200 MW.
limit is reached. When next unit is committed optimal Optimum power generations and total fuel cost (TFC)
power generation is computed using coordination for classical ED, UC and UCED methods are
equation (5). Hence computations are unique. computed and shown in Tables 4, 5 and 6
respectively. From these tables it can be observed
IV. CASE STUDY UCED method is the most economical compared to
classical ED and Unit Commitment methods.
Consider a three unit thermal plant with the following
data. Here transmission losses are neglected.

Table 1: Data of three unit thermal plant

Unit H, MBtu/h Cost of Pmin, Pmax,

MBtu, ` MW MW
1 510+7.2P1+0.00142P1^2 11 150 600
2 310+7.85P2+0.00194P2^2 10 100 400
3 78+7.97P3+0.00482P3^2 12 50 200
Table 4: ED Classical
The resulting fuel cost and unit efficiency order are
ED
given in Tables 2 and 3 respectively.
PD, MW P1, MW P2, MW P3, MW TFC, `/h
Table 2: Fuel Cost 300 150 100 50 34848
400 183.9 166.1 50 43240
Unit F, `/h 500 239.29 210.71 50 51821
600 294.69 255.31 50 60575
1 5610+79.2P1+0.01562P1^2 350.09 299.91 50 69502
700
2 3100+78.5P2+0.0194P2^2 405.48 344.52 50 78602
800
3 936+95.64P3+0.05784P3^2
900 460.88 389.12 50 87876
1000 477.185 400 122.815 98118
1100 600 400 100 10744
1200 600 400 200 11873

1915
Krishnarayalu Unit Commitment with Economic Dispatch
 International Electrical Engineering Journal (IEEJ)
Vol. 6 (2015) No.5, pp. 1913-1916
ISSN 2078-2365
http://www.ieejournal.com/

Table 5: UC Priority List Method committed for a given PD. In UCED only required
number of units is committed according to PD as in
UC UC. In UCED computations are unique not trial and
PD, MW P1, MW P2, MW P3, MW TFC, error values. A three unit thermal power system is
`/h taken as a case study. From Tables 4 and 5 UC is
300 0 300 0 28396 economical than classical ED. Comparing Tables 4,5
400 0 400 0 37604 and 6 UCED is the most economical for different P D.
500 100 400 0 51290 Here what is presented is the basic idea of UCED
600 200 400 0 59679
only, viz commit the units based on their efficiency
700 300 400 0 68380
800 400 400 0 77393 and share the load according to coordination equation
900 500 400 0 86719 (5) if number of units is two or more. Further
1000 600 400 0 96357 research on this method may leads to its commercial
1100 600 400 100 10744 use.
1200 600 400 200 11873
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The author greatly acknowledges Siddhartha

Academy of General and Technical Education,
Table 6: UCED Vijayawada for providing the facilities to carry out
this research.
UCED
PD, MW P1, MW P2, MW P3, MW TFC, REFERENCES
`/h
1. Allen J. Wood and Bruce F. Wollenberg Power Generation,
300 0 300 0 28396 Operation & Control 2/e, Wiley India, New Delhi, 2010.
400 0 400 0 37604 2. J.J.Grainger and W.D.Stevenson Jr, Power system analysis, Tata
500 266.99 233.01 0 50314 McGraw Hill, New Delhi, 2012.
3. HadiSaadat, Power System Analysis ,Tata McGraw Hill, New
600 322.39 277.61 0 59154 Delhi, 2007.
700 377.78 322.22 0 68168 4. IJ Nagrath and DP Kothari Modern power system analysis 4/e,
800 433.18 366.82 0 77355 TMH, New Delhi, 2014
900 500 400 0 86719 5. Sayeed Salam, Unit Commitment Solution Methods, World
Academy of Science, Engineering and Technology 11 2007, pp
1000 600 400 0 96357 320-325.
1100 600 400 100 10744 6. Juan Pablo Fossati, Memoria de Trabajos de DifusinCientfica
1200 600 400 200 11873 y Tcnica, nm. 10 (2012) 83, ISSN 1510-7450 ISSN (enlnea)
1688-9584
7. Brittany Wright, A Review of Unit Commitment, ELENE4511,
May 28, 2013
V. CONCLUSIONS 8. Surekha P. et. al. , Unit Commitment and Economic Load
Dispatch using Self Adaptive Differential Evolution, WSEAS
Transactionson Power Systems, E-ISSN: 2224-350X, 159-171
A new unit commitment method named UCED is Issue 4, Volume 7, October 2012
proposed by committing the units based on their 9. Mohammad Reza Salimian and Mohammad Taghi Ameli,
efficiency as in UC and computing the optimum HGAPSO based method for solving Unit Commitment Problem,
IEEJ Vol. 6 (2015) No. 3, pp 1834-1840. ISSN 2078-2365
generation using the coordination equation (5) of
classical ED method when more than one unit are
committed. In classical ED method all units are

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Krishnarayalu Unit Commitment with Economic Dispatch

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