Contingency-constrained unit commitment with post-contingency corrective recourse

We consider the problem of minimizing costs in the generation unit commitment problem, a cornerstone in electric power system operations, while enforcing an -- reliability criterion. This reliability criterion is a generalization of the well-known - criterion and dictates that at least fraction of the total system demand (for ) must be met following the failure of or fewer system components. We refer to this problem as the contingency-constrained unit commitment problem, or CCUC. We present a mixed-integer programming formulation of the CCUC that accounts for both transmission and generation element failures. We propose novel cutting plane algorithms that avoid the need to explicitly consider an exponential number of contingencies. Computational studies are performed on several IEEE test systems and a simplified model of the Western US interconnection network. These studies demonstrate the effectiveness of our proposed methods relative to current state-of-the-art.Sandia National Laboratories' Laboratory-Directed Research and Development Program; U.S. Department of Energy's Office of Science (Advanced Scientific Computing Research program); U.S. Department of Energy's National Nuclear Security Administration [DE-AC04-94AL85000]12 month embargo; First Online: 05 December 2014This item from the UA Faculty Publications collection is made available by the University of Arizona with support from the University of Arizona Libraries. If you have questions, please contact us at repository@u.library.arizona.edu