ABSTRACT
Economic dispatch control determines the power output of each generating unit within a power plant and the power plant output. The purpose of the economic dispatch study is to minimize the overall cost of fuel needed to serve the system load. Fuel cost, staff salary, interest, and depreciation charges, and maintenance costs are some of the components of operating costs. The major portion of the operating cost is fuel cost, and it can be controlled. Two constraints on Unit Commitment are needed to be considered out of the number of constraints. These two are the minimum uptime and minimum downtime. Once it is committed, it has to be in the system for a specified minimum uptime. The second constraint is the minimum downtime, which is defined when a thermal unit is de-committed; it cannot be turned on immediately.
