An improved priority list and neighborhood search method for unit commitment

This paper presents an improved priority list and neighborhood search (IPL-NS) method for ramp rate constrained unit commitment (RUC). The IPL-NS consists of two steps. At the first step, an IPL based on a mixed integer linear programming (MILP) formulation for UC is proposed to get unit status for UC without ramp rate constraints. At the second step, a neighborhood search (NS) algorithm based on three neighborhoods is produced to get unit status for RUC. The IPL-NS approach is applied to solve several popular test systems of up to 1000 units and the simulation results confirm the superiority of the proposed method. At the same time, the numerical results show that the proposed IPL can commit the most economic unit first much better than other existing PL methods. The results also indicate that the presented NS can handle the ramp rate constraints efficiently.