Using a Unit Commitment Program to Coordinate Power Transactions with Internal System Generation

Jacksonville Electric Authority (JEA), an oil-burning municipal in Florida, currently has contracts with Southern Company to purchase up to 600 MW of "coal-by-wire" power. An important operating question facing the JEA control staff is: "How should the JEA internal dispatch be coordinated with the Southern purchase to minimize the system production costs while still maintaining the system security requirements?" To answer this complex question, JEA engineers use a unit commitment program which has a global optimization capability. The purpose of this paper is to describe the computer program, report computational experiences, and present a sample interchange coordination study to illustrate practical applications.