Effect of emission constraints on short-term unit commitment

During the last few years, emission control has become a problem of global concern due to the constantly increasing pollution of earth's atmosphere. In order to reach the emission reduction targets imposed by the Kyoto Protocol, a limitation of the emissions produced by the generating units is needed. This paper proposes a new method for the incorporation of the carbon dioxide emission constraints in the solution of the short-term unit commitment problem, based on an efficient simulated annealing algorithm. The emission constraints are taken into account by integrating the cost of purchasing additional emission allowances, whenever the total system emissions exceed a predefined maximum limit, into the objective function of the unit commitment problem. Numerical simulations have proven the efficiency of the proposed method.