Unit commitment model considering shiftable load and base-load cycling constraints

Renewable energy, notably wind power, is developing very fast around the world. In practice, especially in China, base-load cycling capacity shortage and wind prediction errors are main obstacles to make full use of the wind power. There are growing interests in using demand side resources to facilitate the integration of renewable energy. In this context, in order that a wind power integration margin (WPIM) is assured for a system, a novel unit commitment model is proposed in this paper. In this model, the shiftable load (SL) and base-load cycling constraints are considered. To solve this model, the linearized formulation of the UC model is used, and then the model can be solved by the mixed integer linear programming (MILP) in GAMS. Finally, numerical simulations are presented to verify the effectiveness of the proposed model. It is shown that the SL can effectively mitigate the shortage of base-load cycling capacity, thus improve the WPIM. In addition, system operation costs can be reduced effectively when the SL is considered.