Emission constrained unit-commitment (ECUC)

This paper presents a short-term unit commitment approach that incorporates environmental externalities into electric utility operations decision-making. The suggested approach identifies the least cost action for achieving daily or weekly emission targets. The problem formulation includes all standard system constraints, and explicitly addresses variable emission during start-up, operation, and shut-down of electric generating units. The problem is solved using a Lagrangian relaxation-based algorithm which offers a practical approach to the emission constrained unit commitment problem.