Optimal power system unit commitment with guaranteed local stability

This article deals with the cost optimal commitment of power systems. System stability is often only considered after solving the commitment problem. We show by example that a cost optimization may result in a mode of operation that, while economically optimal, is unstable or has otherwise unacceptable dynamics. As a remedy, we propose to use the so-called normal vector method, which has been developed for the optimization of nonlinear dynamical systems with stability boundaries and uncertain parameters. We apply the method to a small sample power grid, where the optimization goal is to minimize the energy production costs for a given power consumption.