Assignment MSEM

Adrian Ceballos Lpez 201117662 Chigoziri Egeruoh 201117663 The solution of the base case of the unit commitment problem is presented below. This graph is used as a reference to compare the results of the other models. The value of the objective function for the base case is 9.8646.
WIND

5000 4500 4000 3500 3000 2500 2000 1500 1000 500 0 1 7 13 19 25 31 37 43 49 55 61 67 73 79 85 91 97 103 109 115 121 127 133 139 145 151 157 163

HYDRO_PUM HYDRO_ROR HYDRO_RES_Bomb HYDRO_PUM HYDRO_RES GAS FUELOIL CCGT ANTHRACITE BITUMINOUS SUBBITUMIN LIGNITE HYDRO_ROR NUCLEAR

Question #1 1.1. As we can see in the results of the initial model, the Fuel oil plant is started up and shut down twice per day from Monday to Friday, to satisfy the requirements of energy during the peak hours. This happens because the fuel oil despite having a high operation costs has a low starting up and shutting down costs and the model prefers to use this generator as a peak unit than other more expensive plants. This operation is the most economical for the system but is not necessarily the most efficient in terms of the deterioration and the maintenance required for the plant because it can produce some damages and reduce the useful life of the plant. To avoid this situation, the constraint e_limarr is included in the model. This constraint consists in reducing the total number of start-up per day to a maximum of one start-up. As we can see in the constraint it calculates the sum of all the start-ups (y(p,t)) for all the periods of a specific day for each thermal unit which has to be lower or equal to 1. The expected result of this constraint is an increase in the value of the objective function due to the use of the fuel oil plant during some hours in the non-peak hours in the afternoon where the plant was not producing in the initial case because of the constraint of continuous operation. The result of this constraint could also be achieved by introducing a constraint on the minimum number of continuous operation periods in which the thermal plant has to be producing electricity (approximately 13 hours). 1.2. Once the model is run with the constraint we can see that the fuel oil plant is started up only once every day from Monday to Friday, however in the hours between the daily peaks, the plant is not being shut down but is being operated at the operative minimums from Monday to Wednesday and a bit higher for Thursday and Friday. The difference between the first three days of the week and the end of the week is caused by the maintenance of the lignite plant that is programmed for Thursday and Friday.

WIND

5000 4500 4000 3500 3000 2500 2000 1500 1000 500 0 1 7 13 19 25 31 37 43 49 55 61 67 73 79 85 91 97 103 109 115 121 127 133 139 145 151 157 163

HYDRO_PUM HYDRO_ROR HYDRO_RES_Bomb HYDRO_PUM HYDRO_RES GAS FUELOIL CCGT ANTHRACITE BITUMINOUS SUBBITUMIN LIGNITE HYDRO_ROR NUCLEAR

An expected outcome of the constraint given that is activated by the optimization process is an increase in the value of the objective function due to the use of a more expensive fuel for supply the electricity required by the demand which is higher than the start-up and shutdown costs. The value of the objective function with the new constraint is 9.8517 which is smaller than the value of the base case. This is opposed to the expected outcome, but is important to analyze the possible causes of this result. Given that the model is working with binary variables, the convergence of the model is determined by the parameter OPTCR (which is the tolerance for the convergence of the optimization with binary variables which is set as 0.01.) If we change this parameter to 0.0001 the value of the objective function obtained for the base case is 9.7885 and the value for the model with the startup constraint is 9.8119 which is according to what is expected when you include a new constraint. Another difference found in the new base case is that for Thursday and Friday the fuel oil plant is not shut-down during the afternoon hours due to the maintenance of the lignite plant. Question #2 2.1 The base case for this question which includes the increase of 10% in the cost of the fuel and the constraint e_limarr, has an OF of 10.6531. The difference between the results of the model of the previous condition is only in the total cost because of the increase of the fuel costs, however the dispatch is still the same. The current ramp rates were validated subtracting the minimum from the maximum gross power for each thermal unit times the conversion factor (from gross no net power), and dividing it by the upward ramp of the thermal groups, obtaining the number of hours required to ramp from the minimum to the maximum or vice versa (the upward ramp rate is equal to the downward ramp rate). All the values of the number of hours were three hours. For calculating the new ramp rates by increasing the limit to 6 hours in all the thermal generators (neglecting nuclear) we just change the scalar division from 3 hours to 6 hours.

WIND

5000 4500 4000 3500 3000 2500 2000 1500 1000 500 0 1 7 13 19 25 31 37 43 49 55 61 67 73 79 85 91 97 103 109 115 121 127 133 139 145 151 157 163

HYDRO_PUM HYDRO_ROR HYDRO_RES_Bomb HYDRO_PUM HYDRO_RES GAS FUELOIL CCGT ANTHRACITE BITUMINOUS SUBBITUMIN LIGNITE HYDRO_ROR NUCLEAR

For this case the result is an increase in the value of the Objective function (10.9392) due to the slower rate of decrease in the generation level. In the base case, when a expensive unit was generating, and due to the economical reasons was not committed for the next hours, or committed to supply at its minimum capacity, the optimization process ramp down the unit as fast as possible to reduce the cost incurred by burning the expensive fuel, however the new ramp model that limit to 6 hours the upward and downward curve constraint the model to operate more time with the more expensive fuel, giving as a result a more costly operation. 2.2To achieve this we commented the constraints E_RAMPS and E_RAMPB, that were limiting to some fixed values, the difference between the generations in two consecutive hours. The result is a reduction in the value of the cost of the operation (10.5836) as an expensive plant can reduce or increase the generation instantaneously without burning the more expensive fuel when is not required.
WIND

5000 4500 4000 3500 3000 2500 2000 1500 1000 500 0 1 7 13 19 25 31 37 43 49 55 61 67 73 79 85 91 97 103 109 115 121 127 133 139 145 151 157 163

HYDRO_PUM HYDRO_ROR HYDRO_RES_Bomb HYDRO_PUM HYDRO_RES GAS FUELOIL CCGT ANTHRACITE BITUMINOUS SUBBITUMIN LIGNITE HYDRO_ROR NUCLEAR

As we can see in the graph, the slopes in the curves of the expensive fuels are steeper than in the previous case, which reduces the cost of the operation. In practice this constraint cannot be removed because the ramps are physical characteristics of the generators that reflects its operational limits Question #3 A difference of 0.7908 M will be observed if the pumping units are neglected, having a total operating cost of 10.5793 M compared with the initial case. This difference is caused by the buffering effect of the pumping units, which pump water to the reservoirs during the non peak hours, when the electricity price is low to generate in the peak hours when the electricity price is higher. We can say that pumping units behave as peaking plants because they are more flexible to be started up and shut down

All the other units (except the nuclear) started responding to the demand fluctuations and the variations in the output from Monday to Wednesday are due to the ramp constraints. In hours 14, 18 and 22 when the larger decreases and increases in demand are happening, some of the plants have to decrease the generation to compensate the limitations in the ramps of other thermal plants. This effect was absorbed by the pumping units. The change in the model was done by setting the maximum gross pump power of the generators to zero.
WIND

5000 4500 4000 3500 3000 2500 2000 1500 1000 500 0 1 7 13 19 25 31 37 43 49 55 61 67 73 79 85 91 97 103 109 115 121 127 133 139 145 151 157 163

HYDRO_PUM HYDRO_ROR HYDRO_RES_Bomb HYDRO_PUM HYDRO_RES GAS FUELOIL CCGT ANTHRACITE BITUMINOUS SUBBITUMIN LIGNITE HYDRO_ROR NUCLEAR

Another finding in this model is the increase in the Non Served Power, which happens in the peak hours when the pumping units where supplying the electricity. Question #4 4.1 We used the same conditions as in the question # 2 but using a OPTCR of 0.01 as in the base case, which gave us a little variation from 10.6915 M (using the binary variable) to 10.7054 M (using the continuous variable) If we set the OPTCR to 0.0001 in both models, the results are the same and the only difference between defining the variable y(p,g) as binary or continuous is the computation time. Given the constraint of logic coherence of startup-commitment-shut down, the values of the variable y that defines the start-up of the plants are limited to have values of 0 or 1. 4.2 With the original model using RMIP instead of MIP, the objective function obtained is 10.5803 M, however analyzing the results of the commitment of the plants what we can see is that some of them are fractionally committed which is not feasible given that a plant is either committed or not. Question #5 We use the initial base case without the start-up and shut down constraint on thermal units, which has a value of the objective function equal to 9.8646 M. With the integration of the wind energy, the total cost of the operation of the system decreases to 8.7525 M

The wind is working as a base load because is the cheapest technology and has a nil operation cost. The non-served power is reduced by almost 70% The generation of the fuel oil plant is reduced because is the most expensive generator. However during the peak hours it cannot be replaced totally.
WIND

5000 4500 4000 3500 3000 2500 2000 1500 1000 500 0 1 7 13 19 25 31 37 43 49 55 61 67 73 79 85 91 97 103 109 115 121 127 133 139 145 151 157 163

HYDRO_PUM HYDRO_ROR HYDRO_RES_Bomb HYDRO_PUM HYDRO_RES GAS FUELOIL CCGT ANTHRACITE BITUMINOUS SUBBITUMIN LIGNITE HYDRO_ROR NUCLEAR

The demand for Sunday at 6am is the lowest of the week, and the model use the thermal plants operating at the minimum, but that is not enough because the generation is still higher than the demand. For the system is cheaper to keep the thermal units generating at the technical minimum that shut them down and start them up again in the next period. Thats the reason why the Run of River generation is shut down during that hour. Question #6 The value of the Objective function increases to 9.9590 which was expected due to the a priori power requirement from CCGT and Gas that was 80.53 GWh has been changed to 95 GWh per week. We identify a reduction in the generation of some units, for example the fuel oil generator that was generating during the peak hours. Also during some non-peak hours the bituminous generator was replaced by the gas, that despite being a more expensive generator has to produce to fulfill the 95 GWh constraint. Another pattern identified is that the gas generator has earlier start-ups and later shut-downs and the replacement of some pumping units production with gas production on the Saturdays peak hour, accounting for the extra 15 GWh.
WIND

5000 4500 4000 3500 3000 2500 2000 1500 1000 500 0 1 7 13 19 25 31 37 43 49 55 61 67 73 79 85 91 97 103 109 115 121 127 133 139 145 151 157 163

HYDRO_PUM HYDRO_ROR HYDRO_RES_Bomb HYDRO_PUM HYDRO_RES GAS FUELOIL CCGT ANTHRACITE BITUMINOUS SUBBITUMIN LIGNITE HYDRO_ROR NUCLEAR