Optimal Bidding Strategies of Wind-Thermal Power Producers

This paper addresses a stochastic mixed-integer linear programming model for solving the self-scheduling problem of a thermal and wind power producer acting in an electricity market. Uncertainty on market prices and on wind power is modelled via a scenarios set. The mathematical formulation of thermal units takes into account variable and start-up costs and operational constraints like: ramp up/down limits and minimum up/down time limits. A mixed-integer linear formulation is used to obtain the offering strategies of the coordinated production of thermal and wind energy generation, aiming the profit maximization. Finally, a case study is presented and results are discussed

On the convex hull of convex quadratic optimization problems with indicators

We consider the convex quadratic optimization problem with indicator variables and arbitrary constraints on the indicators. We show that a convex hull description of the associated mixed-integer set in an extended space with a quadratic number of additional variables consists of a single positive semidefinite constraint (explicitly stated) and linear constraints. In particular, convexification of this class of problems reduces to describing a polyhedral set in an extended formulation. While the vertex representation of this polyhedral set is exponential and an explicit linear inequality description may not be readily available in general, we derive a compact mixed-integer linear formulation whose solutions coincide with the vertices of the polyhedral set. We also give descriptions in the original space of variables: we provide a description based on an infinite number of conic-quadratic inequalities, which are ``finitely generated." In particular, it is possible to characterize whether a given inequality is necessary to describe the convex hull. The new theory presented here unifies several previously established results, and paves the way toward utilizing polyhedral methods to analyze the convex hull of mixed-integer nonlinear sets

Otimização da produção de poços de petróleo com injeção contínua de gás e alinhamento poço-separador: modelos lineares por partes e algoritmos

Dissertação (mestrado) - Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina, Centro Tecnológico, Programa de Pós-Graduação em Engenharia de Automação e SistemasThe lift-gas allocation problem with well-separator routing constraints is a mixed-integer nonlinear program of considerable complexity. To this end, a mixed-integer linear formulation (compact) is obtained by piecewise-linearizing the nonlinear curves, using binary variables to express the linearization and routing decisions. A new formulation (integrated) combining the decisions on linearization and routing is developed by using a single type of binary variable. The structures of both formulations are explored to generate lifted cover cuts. Numerical tests show that the use of cutting planes in a cut-and-branch scheme accelerates the resolution time. The solution of the integrated formulation using cutting-plane generation is faster in spite of having more variables than the compact formulatio

A new mixed-integer modeling approach for capacity-constrained continuous-time scheduling problems

Nowadays, scheduling and resource management are increasingly important issues for organizations. Indeed, they do not only constitute an underlying necessity to make things work properly within the companies, but are and will always be more critical means to reduce costs and get competitive advantage in the market. Different approaches have been typically employed for these problems during the years. Among the others, linear programming techniques represent a valid tool that, despite applicable only to instances of limited dimension, offers an extremely flexible modeling opportunity, able to produce either optimal or approximate solutions of certified quality. In this spirit, the definition of suitable indicator variables and the use of particular constraints are proposed in the present work, with the aim of providing a useful basis for different mathematical models, taking into account scarce resources and other potential limitations. More in detail, a very well-known problem from the literature, the Resource Constrained Project Scheduling Problem, is investigated, and a new mixed-integer linear formulation is introduced, which treats time as a continuous variable. The considered model presents several advantages from the computational point of view, that are deeply studied and compared with those of one of the best methods recently developed in the same field. Extensive experiments reveal the good performances achieved by the proposed formulation over all the KPIs included in the analysis, thus motivating further applications to derived problems, such as the workforce planning and scheduling framework presented at the end of this dissertation

Reinforcement Learning for the Unit Commitment Problem

In this work we solve the day-ahead unit commitment (UC) problem, by formulating it as a Markov decision process (MDP) and finding a low-cost policy for generation scheduling. We present two reinforcement learning algorithms, and devise a third one. We compare our results to previous work that uses simulated annealing (SA), and show a 27% improvement in operation costs, with running time of 2.5 minutes (compared to 2.5 hours of existing state-of-the-art).Comment: Accepted and presented in IEEE PES PowerTech, Eindhoven 2015, paper ID 46273