Power system operations scheduling using separable programming

The problem of electric power operations scheduling comprises maintenance scheduling, intermediate- and short-term hydro-thermal scheduling, unit commitment and production scheduling. Recognizing the inter-relationship among these subproblems, the effect on one another is analyzed. Computationally efficient formulations and algorithms for maintenance scheduling and intermediate- and short-term hydro-thermal scheduling are presented.A variation of the separable programming technique is presented. This results in a linear programming formulation of the nonlinear scheduling problem. This technique is applied to a hypothetical system containing nuclear, fossil, hydro-electric and pumped-storage units. The large problem of hydro-thermal scheduling due to the inclusion of a nuclear unit is decomposed into two stages. In the first stage, the relatively stable nuclear generation is optimized with respect to the generation from large fossil-steam units. Hourly generation levels for all units in the system are then determined in the second stage.