Approach for Developing Open and Efficient Resource Scheduling Solutions

Large scale real world resource scheduling problems in the electricity industry are hard to solve due to its combinatorial nature. In the past, the problem formulation and corresponding solution algorithm are often tightly coupled, and the solution algorithms are normally custom developed algorithms that are difficult to extend and adapt to changing business logics. Since the business logics change more frequently in the restructured electricity industry, it will be very desirable to design more stable and open solutions that facilitate reuse of the developed solution algorithms and thus reduce development costs. This paper presents a new structure based approach that separates the problem modeling from the solution algorithm and utilizes commercial off the shelf optimization component. In this way, the solutions developed for resource scheduling problems will continue to work even when the problem formulation changes