Augmented Lagrange Hopfield network based Lagrangian relaxation for unit commitment

This paper proposes an augmented Lagrange Hopfield network based Lagrangian relaxation (ALHN-LR) for solving unit commitment (UC) problem with ramp rate constraints. ALHN-LR is a combination of improved Lagrangian relaxation (ILR) and augmented Lagrange Hopfield network (ALHN) enhanced by heuristic search. The proposed ALHN-LR method solves the UC problem in three stages. In the first stage, ILR is used to solve unit scheduling satisfying load demand and spinning reserve constraints neglecting minimum up and down time constraints. In the second stage, heuristic search is applied to refine the obtained unit schedule including primary unit de-commitment, unit substitution, minimum up and down time repairing, and de-commitment of excessive units. In the last stage, ALHN which is a continuous Hopfield network with its energy function based on augmented Lagrangian relaxation is applied to solve constrained economic dispatch (ED) problem and a repairing strategy for ramp rate constraint violations is used if a feasible solution is not found. The proposed ALHN-LR is tested on various systems ranging from 17 to 110 units and obtained results are compared to those from many other methods. Test results indicate that the total production costs obtained by the ALHN-LR method are much less than those from other methods in the literature with a faster manner. Therefore, the proposed ALHN-LR is favorable for large-scale UC implementation.