An Integer Variable Reduction and Neighborhood Search Cutting Plane Method for Security Constrained Unit Commitment

Security-constrained unit commitment (SCUC) is the foundation to ensure the safe and economic operation of power systems. A large number of integer variables and complex network security constraints are the main barriers that limit the computation efficiency of the SCUC problem. In this paper, the congestion information is used to identify the units that play a key role in alleviating transmission congestion, in the process of iterative solving of the SCUC. Then the commitment statuses of non-critical units are fixed, and the number of integer variables is reduced. Additionally, a neighborhood search cutting plane is designed and added to the model so as to reduce the branch-and-bound search space of the mixed integer programming problem. The simulation results of the 3375-bus case demonstrate that the proposed method can significantly improve the solving efficiency compared with the traditional method.