Parallel hybrid enhanced inherited GA based scuc in a distributed cluster

In the deregulated electricity market, secure operation is an enduring concern of the independent system operator (ISO). For a secure and economical hourly generation schedule of the day ahead market, ISO executes the security constrained unit commitment (SCUC) problem. In this paper, a new formulation of SCUC problem, considering more practical constraints are presented. The proposed SCUC formulation includes constraints, such as hourly power demand, system reserves, ramp up/down limits, minimum ON/OFF duration limits. Unlike the traditional SCUC techniques the proposed method solves the Security Constrained Economic Dispatch (SCED) from the UC. To solve such SCUC model, a hybrid solution method consists of an enhanced inherited genetic algorithm (EIGA) is used for unit commitment master problem and Lambda relaxation method is used for the economic dispatch sub-problem. The message passing interface (MPI) based technique is used to implement the hybrid EIGA in distributed memory model. The time complexity and the solution quality with respect to the number of processors in a cluster are thoroughly analyzed. The effectiveness of the proposed method to solve the SCUC problem is shown on different test systems.