Congestion management optimization in electric transmission system

Congestion management in electric transmission systems is one of the most important challenges for power systems with high penetration of renewable energy. System congestion occurs when the desired power flow cannot be transmitted through the network without violating system operating limits. In order to prevent severe system damage, a significant number of congestion management methods have been developed, including nodal pricing, load shedding, curtailment of renewable energy generation, generator rescheduling, optimal transmission switching, etc. Most of these methods, however, do not comply with the optimal operation of conventional power plants subjected to dynamic constraints (manoeuvrability, start-up and shut down times, etc.). In this paper, the rescheduling generation (or re-dispatch optimization) problem is solved using a modified particle swarm optimization (PSO) algorithm which accounts for start up as well as shut down times, and the manoeuvrability of conventional power plants.