Benjamin F. Hobbs – författare

Over the years, the electric power industry has been using optimization methods to help them solve the unit commitment problem. The result has been savings of tens and perhaps hundreds of millions of dollars in fuel costs. Things are changing, however. Optimization technology is improving, and the industry is undergoing radical restructuring. Consequently, the role of commitment models is changing, and the value of the improved solutions that better algorithms might yield is increasing. The dual purpose of this book is to explore the technology and needs of the next generation of computer models for aiding unit commitment decisions. Because of the unit commitment problem's size and complexity and because of the large economic benefits that could result from its improved solution, considerable attention has been devoted to algorithm development in the book. More systematic procedures based on a variety of widely researched algorithms have been proposed and tested. These techniques have included dynamic programming, branch-and-bound mixed integer programming (MIP), linear and network programming approaches, and Benders decomposition methods, among others.Recently, metaheuristic methods have been tested, such as genetic programming and simulated annealing, along with expert systems and neural networks. Because electric markets are changing rapidly, how UC models are solved and what purposes they serve need reconsideration. Hence, the book brings together people who understand the problem and people who know what improvements in algorithms are really possible. The two-fold result in "The Next Generation of Electric Power Unit Commitment Models" is an assessment of industry needs and new formulations and computational approaches that promise to make unit commitment models more responsive to those needs.

Planning, operating, and policy making in the electric utility and natural gas sectors involves important trade-offs among economic, social, and environmental criteria. These trade-offs figure prominently in ongoing debates about how to meet growing energy demands and how to restructure the world's power industry. This work reviews practical tools for multicriteria (also called multiobjective) decision analysis that can be used to quantify trade-offs and contribute to more consistent, informed, and transparent decision making. These methods are designed to generate and effectively communicate information about trade-offs; to help people form, articulate, and apply value judgments in decision making; and to promote effective negotiation among stakeholders with competing interests. The text includes explanations of a wide range of methods, tutorial applications that readers can duplicate, a detailed review of energy-environment applications, and three in-depth case studies.

This addition to the ISOR series introduces complementarity models in a straightforward and approachable manner and uses them to carry out an in-depth analysis of energy markets, including formulation issues and solution techniques. In a nutshell, complementarity models generalize: a. optimization problems via their Karush-Kuhn-Tucker conditions b. on-cooperative games in which each player may be solving a separate but related optimization problem with potentially overall system constraints (e.g., market-clearing conditions) c. conomic and engineering problems that aren’t specifically derived from optimization problems (e.g., spatial price equilibria) d. roblems in which both primal and dual variables (prices) appear in the original formulation (e.g., The National Energy Modeling System (NEMS) or its precursor, PIES). As such, complementarity models are a very general and flexible modeling format. A natural question is why concentrate on energy markets for this complementarity approach? s it turns out, energy or other markets that have game theoretic aspects are best modeled by complementarity problems. The reason is that the traditional perfect competition approach no longer applies due to deregulation and restructuring of these markets and thus the corresponding optimization problems may no longer hold. Also, in some instances it is important in the original model formulation to involve both primal variables (e.g., production) as well as dual variables (e.g., market prices) for public and private sector energy planning. Traditional optimization problems can not directly handle this mixing of primal and dual variables but complementarity models can and this makes them all that more effective for decision-makers.

Planning, operating, and policy making in the electric utility and natural gas sectors involves important trade-offs among economic, social, and environmental criteria. These trade-offs figure prominently in ongoing debates about how to meet growing energy demands and how to restructure the world's power industry. Energy Decisions and the Environment: A Guide to the Use of Multicriteria Methods reviews practical tools for multicriteria (also called multiobjective) decision analysis that can be used to quantify trade-offs and contribute to more consistent, informed, and transparent decision making. These methods are designed to generate and effectively communicate information about trade-offs; to help people form, articulate, and apply value judgments in decision making; and to promote effective negotiation among stakeholders with competing interests. Energy Decisions and the Environment: A Guide to the Use of Multicriteria Methods includes explanations of a wide range of methods, tutorial applications that readers can duplicate, a detailed review of energy-environment applications, and three in-depth case studies.

Over the years, the electric power industry has been using optimization methods to help them solve the unit commitment problem. The result has been savings of tens and perhaps hundreds of millions of dollars in fuel costs. Things are changing, however. Optimization technology is improving, and the industry is undergoing radical restructuring. Consequently, the role of commitment models is changing, and the value of the improved solutions that better algorithms might yield is increasing. The dual purpose of this book is to explore the technology and needs of the next generation of computer models for aiding unit commitment decisions.Because of the unit commitment problem's size and complexity and because of the large economic benefits that could result from its improved solution, considerable attention has been devoted to algorithm development in the book. More systematic procedures based on a variety of widely researched algorithms have been proposed and tested. These techniques have included dynamic programming, branch-and-bound mixed integer programming (MIP), linear and network programming approaches, and Benders decomposition methods, among others. Recently, metaheuristic methods have been tested, such as genetic programming and simulated annealing, along with expert systems and neural networks. Because electric markets are changing rapidly, how UC models are solved and what purposes they serve need reconsideration. Hence, the book brings together people who understand the problem and people who know what improvements in algorithms are really possible. The two-fold result in The Next Generation of Electric Power Unit Commitment Models is an assessment of industry needs and new formulations and computational approaches that promise to make unit commitment models more responsive to those needs.