Combined cycle unit commitment in a changing electricity market scenario

• Unit commitment problem in the evolving market scenario.
• Analysis of design choices on the economics of the combined cycle units operation.
• Adoption of a recent powerful method for solving mixed integer nonlinear problems.
• Results for two GENCOs, managing single and multiple units.
• Sensitivity of the solution to market conditions and design choices.

For Generation Companies (GENCOs) one of the most relevant issue is the commitment of the units, the scheduling of them over a daily (or longer) time frame, with the aim of obtaining the best profit. It strongly depends on the plant operational generation costs, which depend in turn on the choices taken at the design stage; it follows that design technical choices should also aim at determining the best generation cost structure of generating units with respect to the market opportunities. In the paper the unit commitment (UC) problem has been considered, with highlights on changes in the market scenario. The paper analyzes the relevance of some design choices (structure, size, regulation type) on the economics of the operation of gas–steam combined cycle generating units. To solve the UC problem, a recently proposed method for mixed integer nonlinear programming problems, with the use of a derivative free algorithm to solve the continuous subproblems, has been considered. The results for two GENCOs are reported: one managing a single unit and the other managing three units. Numerical examples show the sensitivity of the UC solutions to the market conditions and to the design choices on the regulation type in the evolving scenario of the Italian Electricity Market.