Power plant optimization in a regulated environment electricity supply industry: A least cost generation approach

Supplying electricity in a reliable and economic manner is of paramount importance in the electricity supply industry worldwide. In view of this, the short term electric power generation scheduling employs two key tasks, unit commitment and economic dispatch. The ultimate objective of this combinatorial optimization task is meeting the load demand at each period of time reliably and in the most cost-effective way while satisfying all constraint requirements. This paper presents the analyses and results of the research conducted on unit commitment and economic dispatch in a regulated environment electricity supply industry using an optimization model developed in Excel-VB Macro.