Modelling network constrained economic dispatch problems

Abstract

The behavior of DC load flow formulations when they are used in economic dispatch and nodal pricing models is discussed. It is demonstrated that nonnegative prices in these models are sufficient to guarantee global optimality of any local optimum, even if the feasible region is not convex, and so a negative nodal price is an indicator of a possible loss in optimality.We also discuss the possible effect that negative prices might have on algorithms that assume this convexity.