Balancing the great British electricity system — Bulk dispatch optimisation

The Balancing Mechanism, managed by the British electricity system operator, National Grid ESO, is designed to maintain a balance between electricity generation and demand. It achieves this by purchasing extra generation (or demand reduction) through accepted offers and extra demand (or generation reduction) through accepted bids from Balancing Mechanism Units (BMUs) in real-time. The current manual approach for instructing BMUs becomes increasingly challenging as access to the market widens and the number of BMUs grows. This paper introduces a proof-of-concept optimisation model to assist Control Room engineers in making optimal decisions for a large number of BMUs. We outline the requirements for instructing BMUs, provide their mathematical formulation, and illustrate this using simple examples. Computational performance results based on test cases with up to 500 units are presented.