EE1401 POWER SYSTEM OPERATION AND CONTROL

UNIT COMMITMENT

‘Unit’ refers to ‘generating unit’ and to ‘commit’ a generating unit is to ‘turn it on’. That
means, start and bring the unit up to speed, synchronize it to the power system to make it deliver
power to the network. To commit enough units and leave them online, whatever be the load demand is
uneconomical. It is expensive to run more generating units than what is required and decommitting or
turning them off, when they are not needed, can save considerable money.
For example, assume that there are three units and each unit’s minimum and maximum MW
limits and fuel costs are known. Let unit 1 be the most economic and unit 3 the most expensive. Then
the optimum commitment will be to first supply from unit 1 and the load can be supplied by operating
closer to its best efficiency and then when the load increases the second unit will be committed with
both units run at their best efficiency possible so that the cost is minimum. The third unit is committed
when the load increases sufficiently so that it is economical to commit unit 3 than to supply the load
from two units.

Figure shows a unit commitment schedule in the case of a simple peak - valley pattern of load
variation.
Unit 1: Min = 150 MW, Max = 600 MW – Most economical

Unit 2 Min = 100 MW, Max = 400 MW

Unit 3:Min = 50 MW, Max = 200 MW – least economical.

But the unit commitment problem is not just meeting the load and is much more than this as there are
other constraints to be considered.

Reference: Power Generation, Operation and Control – A J Wood & R F Woolenberg.

MEENAKSHI COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING, CHENNAI 78