Strategic Scheduling in Smart Grids

With a shorter scheduling horizon, it is easier to handle the system uncertainties in distribution scheduling problem. On the other hand, due to higher cost of some control actions, e.g., tap changing operations, with a short horizon, these high cost control actions may never be justified, even though they could be necessary in the future. With a longer scheduling horizon, the operator have a wider choice and can schedule the tap changing operations to further reduce the total system cost. A multi-period scheduling scheme is proposed in this paper for cost minimization. Different scenarios are generated to model the uncertainties associated with renewable resources, upstream system and system loads. The number of scenarios is then reduced to moderate the computational burden. In the first period, the decision variables should be the same for all scenarios. Only the decisions made for the first period will be applied. For the next periods, this framework should be applied again. In this way, a long scheduling horizon is modeled, the available and forecast data are considered and future decisions are to be made when more accurate data are available. The effectiveness of the method is shown through the case studies.