Min Gen Handling
The Min Gen Handling selection determines how the minimum segments on must run and committed units will be treated in the nodal formulation. There are three options:
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Enforce - this ensures that the minimum generation amounts for units which were committed for the hour or set as must run will be honored in the nodal solution.
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Penalty - this method will attempt to honor the minimum segment amounts by setting a back down penalty value on them for the nodal solution. The value of this back down penalty will be transferred from the zonal resources via the Resources table column Min Gen Back Down Penalty. If resources do not have a penalty specified by the user, the global Dispatch and Demand setting Min gen back down penalty will be used.
As long as the back down penalties are sufficiently high, this method should generally produce similar results as when using Enforce. The exception will be when an hour occurs where the nodal formulation would be infeasible with the minimum generation amounts, and in that case this method will allow the problem to solve by backing down the minimum amounts.
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Relax - this will relax the minimum generation constraints and price them based on the unit’s incremental costs. In this case the minimum generation amounts will likely be often violated.
NOTE: The Relax setting is not compatible with Solution Method = Angles. If selected, Aurora will use Penalty instead.
Min Gen Handling