Optimizing unit commitment technique for operating automated hydro-electric power plants

Dimirovski, Georgi M. (Dogus Author) -- Conference full title: 4th IFAC Workshop Automatic Systems for Building the Infrastructure in Developing Countries, DECOM-TT 2004; Bansko; Bulgaria; 3 October 2004 through 5 October 2004.A systems approach to optimized, energy efficient, hydro-electric power plant operation via commitment of optimum number of generating units has been elaborated and tested in a case study. The application case study is a hydro-electric plant comprising 4 generating units taken from the national power industry practice. This paper presents an optimization technique developed for solving the problem of economic unit commitment dispatch for automated hydro-electric power plants operating under a given power demand. It is based on minimizing a cost function which exploits operational characteristics of water and power consumption. The technique derived is an iterative one with solutions at each iteration being obtained via analytical formulae