Some applications of mathematical programming techniques in optimal power dispatch

Some models for the economic dispatch of electric power are introduced and treated by mathematical programming techniques. In particular, our presentation includes (i) a short-term model for the optimal dispatch of thermal units, which is solved by a specific path following method, (ii) a daily model for a generation system consisting of thermal units, pumped storage plants and an energy contract, which can be solved by standard convex quadratic programming algorithms, and (iii) two stochastic programming models for the optimal daily dispatch, which depend on the (unknown) probability distribution of the electric power demand. One of the latter models can be solved efficiently by combining nonparametric estimation procedures and convex programming methods.