Power System

Course

Power Generation, Operation and Control

Economic Dispatch of
Thermal Units and Methods
of Solution (5)

Chung Yuan Christian University

Department of Electrical Engineering
March 15, 2022

Thermal System Dispatching

 NEWTON'S METHOD

 Drive the gradient to zero

We may wish to go a further step beyond the simple gradient method and
try to solve the economic dispatch by observing that the aim is to
always drive

Since this is a vector function, we can formulate the problem as one of

finding the correction that exactly drives the gradient to zero (i.e., to a
vector, all of whose elements are zero). We know how to find this,
however, since we can use Newton's method. Newton's method for a
function of more than one variable is developed as follows.

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Suppose we wish to drive the function g(x) to zero. The function g is a
vector and the unknowns, x, are also vectors. Then, to use Newton's
method, we observe:

If we let the function be defined as:

then

2 2 2

3 3 3

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which is the familiar Jacobian matrix. The adjustment at each step is
then:

Now, if we let the g function be the gradient vector ▽Lx we get:

For our economic dispatch problem this takes the form:

and ▽L is as it was defined before.

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The Jacobian matrix now becomes one made up of second derivatives and
is called the Hessian matrix:

Generally, Newton's method will solve for the correction that is much
closer to the minimum generation cost in one step than would the
gradient method.

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EXAMPLE 3G

In this example we shall use Newton's method to solve the same

economic dispatch as used in Examples 3E and 3F.

The gradient is the same as in Example 3E, the Hessian matrix is:

In this example, we shall simply set the initial λ equal to 0, and the
initial generation values will be the same as in Example 3E as well.

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 The gradient of the Lagrange function is:

The Hessian matrix is:

Solving for the correction to the x vector and making the correction, we
obtain

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and a total generation cost of 7738.8. Note that no further steps are
necessary as the Newton's method has solved in one step.

When the system of equations making up the generation cost functions

are quadratic, and no generation limits are reached, the Newton's method
will solve in one step.

We have introduced the gradient, reduced gradient and Newton's

method here mainly as a way to show the variations of solution of the
generation economic dispatch problem.

For many applications, the lambda search technique is the preferred

choice. However, in later chapters, when we introduce the optimal power
flow, the gradient and Newton formulations become necessary.

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ECONOMIC DISPATCH WITH PIECEWISE
LINEAR COST FUNCTIONS
 Multiple segment linear cost functions

Many electric utilities prefer to represent their generator cost functions

as single or multiple segment linear cost functions. The curves shown in
Figure 3.6 are representative of such functions.

Note that were we to attempt to use the lambda-iteration search method

on the single segment cost function, we would always land on Pmin or
Pmax unless λ exactly matched the incremental cost at which point the
value of P would be undetermined. To resolve this problem, we perform
the dispatch differently.

For all units running, we start with all of them at Pmin, then begin to
raise the output of the unit with the lowest incremental cost segment.

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If this unit hits the right-hand end of a segment, or if it hits Pmax, we then
find the unit with the next lowest incremental cost segment and raise
its output.

Eventually, we will reach a point where a unit's output is being raised and
the total of all unit outputs equals the total load, or load plus losses. At that
point, we assign the last unit being adjusted to have a generation which
is partially loaded for one segment.

Note, that if there are two units with exactly the same incremental cost,
we simply load them equally.

To make this procedure very fast, we can create a table giving each
segment of each unit its MW contribution (the right-hand end MW
minus the left-hand end MW). Then we order this table by ascending
order of incremental cost.

By searching from the top down in this table we do not have to go and
look for the next segment each time a new segment is to be chosen. This is
an extremely fast form of economic dispatch.

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