Local Search for integrated Economic Dispatch and Unit Commitment problems

Abstract

Abstract I will present a novel way to model the hybrid Unit Commitment (UC) and Economic Dispatch (ED) problem as a variation of an interior point problem, which allows the problem to be tackled by common local-search metaheuristics. On top of that, my state representation is highly intuitive, adaptable and can accept any cost function and many constraints with relative ease. I will also compare my findings with the pre-existing literature and I will show that this method can find an improvement of a known optimum for at least one well known instance of the hybrid UC/ED problem. I will also show that this method exhibits interesting search behaviour which can be preferable in networks with renewable energy sources and various other robustness concerns.