Column generation for the discrete Unit Commitment problem with min-stop ramping constraints

Abstract: The discrete unit commitment problem with min-stop ramping constraints optimizes the daily production of thermal power plants (coal, gas, fuel units). For this problem, compact Integer Linear Programming (ILP) formulations have been designed to solve exactly small instances and heuristically real-size instances. This paper investigates whether Dantzig-Wolfe reformulation allows to improve the previous exact method and matheuristics. The extended ILP formulation is presented with the column generation algorithm to solve its linear relaxation. The experimental results show that the Dantzig-Wolfe reformulation does not improve the quality of the linear relaxation of the tightest compact ILP formulations. Computational experiments suggest also a conjecture which would explain such result: the compact ILP formulation of min-stop ramping constraints would be tight. Such results validate the quality of the exact methods and matheuristics based on compact ILP formulations previously designed.