Reliability-Constrained Unit Commitment Considering Interruptible Load Participation

From the optimization point of view, an optimum solution of the unit commitment problem with reliability constraints can be achieved when all constraints are simultaneously satisfied rather than sequentially or separately satisfying them. Therefore, the reliability constraints need to be appropriately formulated in terms of the conventional unit commitment variables. In this paper, the reliability-constrained unit commitment problem is formulated in a mixed-integer program format. Both the unit commitment risk and the response risk are taken into account as the probabilistic criteria of the operating reserve requirement. In addition to spinning reserve of generating units, interruptible load is also included as a part of operating reserve. The numerical studies using IEEE-RTS indicate the effectiveness of the proposed formulation. The obtained results are presented and the implementation issues are discussed. Two sensitivity analyses are also fulfilled to illustrate the effects of generating unit failure rates and interruption time of interruptible load.