Applications of dynamic programming to energy planning and scheduling problems

Dynamic programming has long been recognized as a very powerful approach to optimization problems. However, its applicability has been somewhat limited because of the high computational requirements of the standard computational procedure. Fortunately, in recent years a number of new computational techniques have been developed for reducing the computational burden while retaining most of the desirable properties of the basic method. Many of these advanced techniques have been developed for solving problems in the area of energy system planning and scheduling. The purpose of the paper is to review a number of specific problems where dynamic programming has been successfully applied. These problems include national energy planning, utility expansion planning, generation scheduling, unit commitment, and automatic generation control. In all cases the problem formulation is given, effective dynamic programming solution algorithms are presented and experience in applying the algorithms to specific problems is cited.