Orbital Crossover

Symmetry in optimization has been known to wreak havoc in optimization algorithms. Often, some of the hardest instances are highly symmetric. This is not the case in linear programming, as symmetry allows one to reduce the size of the problem, possibly dramatically, while still maintaining the same optimal objective value. This is done by aggregating … Read more

Stochastic Look-Ahead Commitment: A Case Study in MISO

This paper introduces the Stochastic Look Ahead Commitment (SLAC) software prototyped and tested for the Midcontinent Independent System Operator (MISO) look ahead commitment process. SLAC can incorporate hundreds of wind, load and net scheduled interchange (NSI) uncertainty scenarios. It uses a progressive hedging method to solve a two-stage stochastic unit commitment. The first stage optimal … Read more

Capturing Unit Startup and Shutdown Uncertainties in the Real-time Commitment Process

Generation uncertainties, especially during the unit startup and shutdown (SU/SD) processes, pose uncertainties for the real-time market clearing process, and they are often underestimated. This paper proposes two approaches to predict generator SU/SD trajectories in the real-time operations of independent system operators or regional transmission organizations (ISO/RTOs). We first collect and pre-process raw market data … Read more

Efficient Prices under Uncertainty and Non-Convexity

Operators of organized wholesale electricity markets attempt to form prices in such a way that the private incentives of market participants are consistent with a socially optimal commitment and dispatch schedule. In the U.S. context, several competing price formation schemes have been proposed to address the non-convex production cost functions characteristic of most generation technologies. … Read more

Decomposing Optimization-Based Bounds Tightening Problems Via Graph Partitioning

Bounds tightening or domain reduction is a critical refinement technique used in global optimization algorithms for nonlinear and mixed-integer nonlinear programming problems. Bounds tightening can strengthen convex relaxations and reduce the size of branch and bounds trees. An effective but computationally intensive bounds tightening technique is optimization-based bounds tightening (OBBT). In OBBT, each variable is … Read more

A Parallel Hub-and-Spoke System for Large-Scale Scenario-Based Optimization Under Uncertainty

Efficient solution of stochastic programming problems generally requires the use of parallel computing resources. Here, we describe the open source package mpi-sppy, in which efficient and scalable parallelization is a central feature. We describe the overall architecture and provide computational examples and results showing scalability to the largest instances that we know of for the … Read more

A Computationally Efficient Algorithm for Computing Convex Hull Prices

Electricity markets worldwide allow participants to bid non-convex production offers. While non-convex offers can more accurately reflect a resource’s capabilities, they create challenges for market clearing processes. For example, system operators may be required to execute side payments to participants whose costs are not covered through energy sales as determined via traditional locational marginal pricing … Read more

Lagrangian relaxation based heuristics for a chance-constrained optimization model of a hybrid solar-battery storage system

We develop a stochastic optimization model for scheduling a hybrid solar-battery storage system. Solar power in excess of the promise can be used to charge the battery, while power short of the promise is met by discharging the battery. We ensure reliable operations by using a joint chance constraint. Models with a few hundred scenarios … Read more

Exploiting Identical Generators in Unit Commitment

We present sufficient conditions under which thermal generators can be aggregated in mixed-integer linear programming (MILP) formulations of the unit commitment (UC) problem, while maintaining feasibility and optimality for the original disaggregated problem. Aggregating thermal generators with identical characteristics (e.g., minimum/maximum power output, minimum up/down-time, and cost curves) into a single unit reduces redundancy in … Read more