Comparison of probabilistic production cost simulation methods

The authors present the results of an investigation of the relative computational speeds and solution qualities of six different probabilistic production cost simulation methods for power systems. The six methods are: the piecewise linear approximation (PLA), segmentation, equivalent energy function (EEF), cumulant, mixture of normal approximation (MONA), and fast Fourier transform (FFT) methods. For energy calculations, considering both speed and accuracy, it is concluded that if accuracy is paramount then the EEF method with the MW interval chosen to be the maximum common divisor of the block capacities is preferred. If speed is paramount, then either MONA or cumulants is preferred