| Summary: | Every day national power system networks provide thousands of MW of electric power from generating units to consumers. This process requires different operations and planning to ensure the security of the entire system. Part of the daily or weekly operation system is the so called Unit Commitment problem which consists of scheduling the available resources in order to meet the system demand. But the continuous growth in electricity demand might put pressure on the ability of the generation system to sufficiently provide supply. In such case load shedding (a controlled, enforced reduction in electricity supply) is necessary to prevent the risk to system collapse. In South Africa at the present time, a systematic lack of supply has meant that regular load shedding has taken place, with substantial economic and social costs. In this research project we study two optimization problems related to load shedding. The first is how load shedding can be integrated into the unit commitment problem. The second is how load shedding can be fairly and efficiently allocated across areas. We develop deterministic and stochastic linear and goal programming models for these purposes. Several case studies are conducted to explore the possible solutions that the proposed models can offer.
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