Unit constraints considered Genco's bidding strategies in hour-ahead electricity market

Power generation companies' (Genco) bidding strategy should consider the optimality in an entire period of time due to the unit operating constraints coupling over times. This paper presents a model for obtaining a Genco's optimal bidding strategy in the hour-ahead power market through Q-learning with unit operating constraints and start-up cost incorporated. The optimal bidding strategy in terms of cumulative total returns is gained through the iterative learning process. Numerical testing results show that this method is effective.