Formulation of Unit Commitment (UC) problems and analysis of available methodologies used for solving the problems

Abstract

In modern world, every industries including the power industry address technological changes. Therefore, it is necessary to keep track of international experiences and activities taking place in every field. This paper provides an overview of the concept of Unit Commitment (UC) problem with a bibliographical survey of relevant background, the present state and potential methodologies used for solving the concern problem. From the literature, UC problem can be categorized based on the system characteristics and policies applied. This paper reviews not only on regulated and deregulated power systems but also on power systems with renewable energy sources and storage system. In addition, it presents a comprehensive review of the methodologies, which covers a wide span of deterministic, meta-heuristic and hybrid approaches including multi-agent system approach. In terms of contribution, it formulates the problem clearly and describes appropriate approaches to solve the problem. The collected literature of methodologies has been divided into many sections, so that new researchers do not face any difficulty in carrying out research on UC problem under both the regulated and deregulated power industries as well as power system with renewable energy sources and storage system for next generation. ©2010 IEEE.