Price forecast for hubs in Western Electricity Coordinating Council with SCUC

We present the exercise of entire Western Electricity Coordinating Council (WECC) region with security constrained unit commitment (SCUC) program over two months outlook. In addition to market based optimal SCUC, some ancillary tools have been utilized for forecasting demand, hydro, and wind over the entire study period. Unlike traditional SCUCs which dispatch all generating resources, all wind, pumped-storage, and hydro units are assumed to be as self-scheduled units and as price takers. The SCUC model has been first calibrated over one year (the entire 2008) study period with actual demands, hydro generation and imports/exports, then it has been utilized to forecast major WECC hub prices from Jan through Sep 2011. All monthly generation dispatches, capacity factors, monitored interface flows and daily prices have been compared with IIR data records and ICE prices respectively.