A Unit Commitment Model with Demand Response for the Integration of Renewable Energies

TL;DR

This paper presents a unit commitment model incorporating demand response to optimize thermal power plant operation amidst renewable energy fluctuations, analyzing forecast errors, sudden wind power drops, and demand response effects.

Contribution

It introduces a novel unit commitment model that accounts for renewable forecast errors and demand response, enhancing operational cost analysis and reserve management.

Findings

Operation costs increase with forecast error.

Demand response reduces thermal plant operation during wind drops.

Thermal plants can be decommissioned with sufficient renewable capacity and demand response.

Abstract

The output of renewable energy fluctuates significantly depending on weather conditions. We develop a unit commitment model to analyze requirements of the forecast output and its error for renewable energies. Our model obtains the time series for the operational state of thermal power plants that would maximize the profits of an electric power utility by taking into account both the forecast of output its error for renewable energies and the demand response of consumers. We consider a power system consisting of thermal power plants, photovoltaic systems (PV), and wind farms and analyze the effect of the forecast error on the operation cost and reserves. We confirm that the operation cost was increases with the forecast error. The effect of a sudden decrease in wind power is also analyzed. More thermal power plants need to be operated to generate power to absorb this sudden decrease in wind power. The increase in the number of operating thermal power plants within a short period does not affect the total operation cost significantly; however the substitution of thermal power plants by wind farms or PV systems is not expected to be very high. Finally, the effects of the demand response in the case of a sudden decrease in wind power are analyzed. We confirm that the number of operating thermal power plants is reduced by the demand response. A power utility has to continue thermal power plants for ensuring supply-demand balance; some of these plants can be decommissioned after installing a large number of wind farms or PV systems, if the demand response is applied using an appropriate price structure.