Talk:Economic dispatch

Scope
This article is related to economical dispatch of Electrical Power, and in no way to economics or finance. Please include this in the Electricity section. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 66.61.160.253 (talk) 01:51, 19 December 2005 (UTC)

Added the definition and relation to the Unit commitment problem
I took the liberty of adding the definition by the US Energy Policy Act of 2005 and characterising the problem as one of mathematical optimisation, with links to the unit commitment problem. This problem is to my opinion related with economics and finance as it employs cost minimisation techniques to schedule production and bears a lot of similarities to many microeconomics cost minimisation problems (e.g. find the optimal production schedule to meet the expected demand profile) jamor131

Added a basic mathematical formulation
I added a basic mathematical formulation for the economic dispatch problem, drawn mainly from Chapter 6 of "The Fundamentals of Power System Economics" (see article for ref). I tried to keep it as high level as possible to avoid being too specific, and didn't discuss how one would go about solving the equations. I also added a short paragraph in the introduction about the historic methodology of economic dispatch and the new problems posed by renewable integration. Jonmat12

Marginal Cost is not equal
The statement "the marginal costs of all generators are the same. That is the cost of producing one additional MWh is the same for every generator" is not accurate. Several factors come immediately to mind, the first being the efficiency of a given plant. Each new generation of combustion turbine produces more MWhrs from a given quantity of natural gas, which tends to lower their marginal cost. Another factor is the price of the fuel. Not all plants pay the same price for fuel; not only will the spot price vary but also tariffs and taxes. Plants which get their fuel cheaper will have a lower marginal cost. The price of transmission to get one's power to market also varies. The price of the electricity consumed by the plant (yes, it takes power to make power) will vary depending on where the plant is located, and if they purchase that power from the utility or "buy" it from themselves since they are generating it themselves. John D Gardner (talk) 23:19, 10 December 2013 (UTC)

Graphs of short-run marginal cost (SRMC) vs energy dispatched of generators (MW)
This page should have graphs of short-run marginal cost (SRMC) vs energy dispatched of generators (MW) to more readily understand the economic dispatch process.

Jamesray1 (talk) 23:08, 8 January 2020 (UTC)

Some references
Some recent references that may assist with this article. With best wishes. RobbieIanMorrison (talk) 10:46, 28 August 2018 (UTC)


 * Kirschen and Strbac (2018) on power system economics (new edition)


 * Huppmann and Siddiqui (2018) on non-convex electricity markets

Another reference
The following book is a useful reference on the  traditional,  monopoly  utility, approach for electricity industry operation and control, however that it has become more common with market-based, restructured electricity markets: Allen J Wood and BruceF Wollenberg, Power Generation, Operation and Control, Wiley, 2nd Edition, 1996.

There's also a 3rd Edition

There's other useful resources, e.g.:

https://www.slideshare.net/HussainAli94/economic-dispatch-64543749 in the context of thermal power plants, although this isn't really citation worthy https://www.researchgate.net/publication/282901269_Economic_Dispatch_in_power_systems Jamesray1 (talk) 23:08, 8 January 2020 (UTC)

Should this be merged with Merit order?
If not how are they different please?Chidgk1 (talk) 17:44, 13 February 2020 (UTC)