A Solution to the Unit Commitment Problem Based on Local Search Method

Unit commitment is an important and difficulty aspect of optimal operation of power systems. Because it belongs to be mixed variables programming that is difficult to find the optimal solution in mathematics. This paper presents a new method combining of neighbor search and interior-point method (LS-IP) to solve UC NP-hard problem. The structure of neighborhood is defined and a new way to adjust neighborhood is referred which can deal with various restrictions to ensure the feasibility of result. In this paper, the large and complex discrete space will be instead by a very small solution neighborhood. The advantages of interior point method, for example with good astringency and high precision, will be fully played to accelerate the speed of calculation. At last 100 units and 24 hours systems have been tested to verify the presented method. The last results show that the method is very promising for large scale application.