Recent Advances inElectrical & Electronic Engineering S. Siva Sakthi 1,* , R.K. Santhi 1 , N. Murali Krishnan 2 , S. Ganesan 1 and S. Subramanian 1 1 Department of Electrical Engineering, Annamalai University, Annamalai Nagar - 608 002, Tamil Nadu, India and 2 Department of Electrical and Electronics Engineering, Mailam Engineering College, Mailam - 604 304, Tamil Nadu, India Abstract: Background: The increasing concern of global climate change, the promotion of renewable energy sources, primarily wind generation, reduces the power generation from conventional plants that lead to the reduction in pollutant emission. The exploitation of wind power generation is rising throughout the world. The objective of Unit Commitment (UC) is to identify the optimal generation scheme of the committed units such that the overall generation cost is reduced, when subjected to a variety of constraints at each time interval. The optimum generation planning in electrical power system is difficult, since UC Problem has many variables and system and unit constraints of thermal generating units. Nowadays, it is essential to include reliability analysis of the power system in operation strategy of the generating units. Here, the generator failure and malfunction are considered in UC problem formulation. Methods: This paper presents a meta-heuristic algorithm based approach to determine the thermal generation schedule with consideration of wind energy system. A novel evolutionary algorithm known as Grey Wolf Optimization (GWO) algorithm is applied to solve the UC problem. Results: The potential of the GWO algorithm is validated by the standard test systems. Besides, the ramp rate limits are also incorporated in the mathematical problem formulation. In order to validate the applicability of the GWO, the standard test system is used for demonstration. Conclusion: The GWO algorithm is applied for the first time to solve wind integrated thermal UC problem considering generator forced outage rates. The simulation results reveal that the GWO algorithm has the capability of obtaining economical resolutions with good solution quality. The implementation of algorithm for solving the chosen problem is simple and robust which indicates that the GWO is a promising alternative for solving wind integrated thermal UC problems. A R T I C L E H I S T O R Y Received: March 14, 2017 Revised: August 18, 2017 Accepted: September 18, 2017 DOI: 10.2174/2352096510666171108155821 Keywords: Grey wolf optimization, ramp rate limit, reliability analysis, unit commitment, wind power generation, UC problem. 1. INTRODUCTION The Unit Commitment (UC) is one of the vital divisions of the thermal power generation scheduling. This is significant because of today's energy paucity and economical impact of power production company. UC problem minimizes the total production cost while gratifying the forecasted load demand and physical and running constraints of the thermal generating units. The constraints include real power generation limits, minimum up/down time, up/down ramp limits and unit initial status. Here, we observe the schedule of thermal generating units combined with wind farm to meet the power requirement of each hour in the planning horizon by considering the generator outages. *Address correspondence to this author at the Department of Electrical and Electronics Engineering, Krishnasamy College of Engineering and Technology, Cuddalore - 607 109, Tamil Nadu, India; Tel:+919842016590; E-mail: sivasakthi_gayu@yahoo.co.in Abundant literatures have been reported for determining thermal UC. Since the Wind Integrated UC (WIUC) is the emerging research field, very few research reports have been reported. Hence, the solution quality of WIUC problem can be improvised by exploring the search space. This inspires to develop a prominent method to determine the most feasible UC schedule for WIUC. The UC problem is formulated as a large-scale, non- convex, mixed integer and non liner programming problem. The finding optimum schedule of generating units is very difficult within acceptable processing time and memory requirement. The complete enumeration method can yield exact solution of the UC problem. However, the excessive computational time requirement makes it unsuitable for realistic power systems. Numerous solution techniques have been developed for solving UC problem and are classified as traditional, artificial intelligence and hybrid methods. 2352-0973/18 $58.00+.00 © 2018 Bentham Science Publishers Send Orders for Reprints to reprints@benthamscience.ae 58 Recent Advances in Electrical & Electronic Engineering, 2018, 11, 58-68 RESEARCH ARTICLE Thermal Unit Commitment Problem along with Wind Power Generation by Considering Generator Outages