Abstract
The rapid penetration of renewable resources into the electricity supply mix poses challenges for the efficient dispatch of resources due to the inherent uncertainty and variability of such resources. Hence, in order to accommodate large amounts of renewables in is necessary to account for their output uncertainty and mobilize the flexibility of the system embedded in conventional generation, demand side resources and the transmission grid. In this talk we formulate a stochastic unit commitment optimization in which we expand the traditional recourse actions that are available to mitigate the adverse effect of renewables variability. In particular we include in these recourse action, topology control through transmission switching and variable line ratings that account for the heating and cooling of transmission lines. We will demonstrate the potential gains from such recourse actions through test cases and discuss heuristic approaches for alleviating the computational burden resulting from such a formulations.