Robust Optimization of the Self- scheduling and Market Involvement for an Electricity Producer

Abstract

This work address the optimization under uncertainty of the self-scheduling, forward contracting, and pool involvement of an electricity producer operating a mixed power generation station, which combines thermal, hydro and wind sources, and uses a two-stage adaptive robust optimization approach. In this problem the wind power production and the electricity pool price are considered to be uncertain, and are described by uncertainty convex sets. Two variants of a constraint generation algorithm are proposed, namely a primal and dual version, and they are used to solve two case studies based on two different producers. Their market strategies are investigated for three different scenarios, corresponding to as many instances of electricity price forecasts. The effect of the producers’ approach, whether conservative or more risk prone, is also investigated by solving each instance for multiple values of the so-called budget parameter. It was possible to conclude that this parameter influences markedly the producers’ strategy, in terms of scheduling, profit, forward contracting, and pool involvement. Regarding the computational results, these show that for some instances, the two variants of the algorithms have a similar performance, while for a particular subset of them one variant has a clear superiority