A Mixed Integer Programming formulation of generator startup costs

The inclusion of generator hot, warm and cold start up costs is critical to accurately model the unit commitment problem faced by electric utilities throughout the world. Furthermore, there is growing popularity in using Mixed Integer Programming (MIP) solvers to tackle the entire unit commitment problem provided a MIP formulation exists. This paper presents an explicit MIP formulation of the hot, warm and cold costs and constraints involved in starting a generator. This formulation is tested on a three generator test system to prove its correctness.