Effective load carrying capability evaluation for high penetration renewable energy integration

This paper proposes an Approximate Dynamic Programming (ADP) based approach to evaluate the effective load carrying capability (ELCC) of high penetration renewable resources by solving the long-term security-constrained unit commitment (SCUC) problem with various uncertainties related to solar radiation, wind speed, and load level. Compared with traditional approaches, the proposed approach can assist Independent System Operator (ISO) to make the decision on the basis of current day information only, hence it can reduce the computation burden from future states forecasting. The objective of the proposed long-term SCUC formulation is to minimize the operation cost for the base case with forecast values while considering variable cost from uncertainties. Numerical case studies on a 6-bus system illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed ADP based long-term SCUC model for the investigation of ELCC under various uncertainties.