Towards Scalable Quantum Unit Commitment in Power Systems: Encoding and Complexity Reduction Techniques
Year: 2026
Type: preprint
Abstract: This paper develops a Quantum optimisation Unit Commitment (UC) framework that benefits from Pauli Correlation Encoding (PCE) as a qubit reduction preprocessing technique and Sample-based Quantum Diagonalisation (SQD) as a hybrid post-processing refinement method. The UC problem is formulated in binary form, then transformed into a QUBO problem and mapped onto an Ising representation suitable for adiabatic quantum evolution within the Qibo framework. This study analyses how PCE and SQD techniques affect qubit scalability, computational effort, feasibility, and probability of recovering the optimal solution as the number of generators increases. The results show that PCE reduces the effective size of the encoded problem, SQD improves the concentration of probability on feasible and optimal solutions, and their combined application provides the best overall behaviour in several scalable case studies, achieving more reliable solutions with lower effective computational cost than the unreduced formulation. The repository is available open source in Github (link is not yet available until work is published. However, if requested by the reviewers, we can make it open for a scific time window, if requested).
Source: arXiv (Cornell University)
Institution: Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya
Language: English
Subfield: Electrical and Electronic Engineering
Field: Engineering
Domain: Physical Sciences
Open Access status: green
Awards: G717256432, G9000377018
OpenAlex ID: W7214951959