Data-Driven Adaptive Robust Optimization Framework for Unit Commitment under Renewable Energy Generation Uncertainty

This article proposes a novel data-driven adaptive robust optimization (ARO) framework for the unit commitment (UC) problem integrating wind power into smart grids. By leveraging a Dirichlet process mixture model, a data-driven uncertainty set for wind power forecast errors is constructed as a union of several basic uncertainty sets. Therefore, the proposed uncertainty set can flexibly capture a compact region of uncertainty in a nonparametric fashion. Based on this uncertainty set and wind power forecasts, a data-driven adaptive robust UC problem is then formulated as a four-level optimization problem. A decomposition-based algorithm is further developed. Compared to conventional robust UC models, the proposed approach does not presume single mode, symmetry or independence in uncertainty. Moreover, it not only substantially withstands wind power forecast errors, but also significantly mitigates the conservatism issue by reducing operational costs. We also compare the proposed approach with the state-of-the-art data-driven ARO method based on principal component analysis and kernel smoothing to assess its performance. The effectiveness of the proposed approach is demonstrated with the six-bus and IEEE 118-bus systems. Computational results show that the proposed approach scales gracefully with problem size and generates solutions that are more cost-effective than the existing data-driven ARO method.