Distributed Robust Unit Commitment Integrating Concentrating Solar Power Plant Considering Central Receiver Operation Mode

The combined operation of concentrating solar power (CSP) and photovoltaic (PV) is an effective way to reduce the curtailment of solar power generation. A distributed robust unit commitment optimization method for CSP and PV integrated system is proposed considering the CSP central receiver operation mode. The proposed method achieves robustness and economic efficiency with fully consideration of the uncertainty of CSP and PV generation. A refined model of CSP plant considering the central receiver operation mode is built to describe the characteristics of solar-thermal-electric energy conversion and the real-time thermal energy storage state accurately. Then a distributed robust optimization method is applied to unit commitment based on the complementary operation mechanism between CSP and PV. The columns and constraints generation (CCG) algorithm is employed to solve the optimization and the total operational cost is minimized. Typical scenarios are generated by data clustering, and the effectiveness of proposed method is verified by numerical results.