Effect of modelling choices in the unit commitment problem

Abstract In power system studies the unit commitment problem (UC) is solved to support market decisions and assess adequacy. Simplifications are made solve UC faster, but they without considering consequences on solution quality. this study we thoroughly investigated impacts of simplifications quality computation time a benchmark set consisting almost all available instances in literature. We found that omitting minimum up- downtime simplifying startup cost resulted significant loss reducing time. Omitting reserve requirements, ramping limits transmission reduced time, degraded significantly. However, linear relaxation less with speed-up no difference when unserved energy was minimized. Finally, average maximum capacity factor large for model variants.