A system of systems engineering approach for unit commitment in multi-area power markets

In power systems, the main grid might be a group of several interconnected areas. The areas can be self-governing with their own polices and rules. According to the concept of system of systems (SoS) engineering, this paper presents a decentralized decision-making framework to determine an economical hourly generation schedule for a multi-area power system. Each self-governing area is modeled as an independent system, and the entire power system is modeled as a SoS. The proposed decentralized unit commitment algorithm takes into account the privacy of each independent system, and only a limited data information such as power exchange between the areas, needs to be exchanged between the systems. An iterative decentralized optimization model is presented to find the optimal operating point of all independent systems in the SoS-based power system architecture. The numerical results show the effectiveness of the proposed SoS framework and solution methodology.