ABSTRACT
Unit commitment is an operation scheduling function, which is sometimes called predispatch. In the overall hierarchy of generation resources management, the unit commitment function fits between the economic dispatch, maintenance, and production scheduling. In terms of time scales involved, unit commitment scheduling covers the scope of hourly power system operation decisions with a 1-day to 1-week horizon. Unit commitment is a planned optimization technique to handle in advance the load demand. This minimizes cost, subject to the constraint on load demand and other resources. Unit commitment schedule is required to meet the load demand over a long period of time [1].
