Robust Integration of High-Level Dispatchable Renewables in Power System Operation

The increasing penetration of renewable energy sources (RES) requires more flexibility resources (FR), such as thermal units and storages. FR kept in the system can help accommodate the uncertainties from RES. The challenge is how the system can survive when the RES level is very high. In this paper, RESs are considered as full-role market participants. They can bid in the day-ahead market, and the powers they deliver to the market are controllable up to their maximum available powers. Therefore, RESs are effectively dispatchable and can function as FR. To integrate dispatchable renewables, a two-stage robust unit commitment (UC) and dispatch model is established. In the first stage, a base UC and dispatch is determined. In the second stage, all FRs including RESs are used to accommodate the uncertainties, which is a mixed-integer programming (MIP) problem. It is proved that the solution to the max-min problem can be identified directly whether the strong duality holds or not for the inner minimization problem. The solution robustness can be guaranteed by considering only one extra scenario. Numerical results show the effectiveness of the proposed model and its advantages over the traditional robust UC model with high-level RES penetration.