  Renewable energy sources (RES) has gained a lot of interest recently. The
limited transmission capacity serving RES often leads to network congestion
since they are located in remote favorable locations. As a result, when poorly
scheduled, the intermittent nature of RES may result in high curtailments of
the free resource. Currently, grid operators utilize a static network when
performing day-ahead scheduling and ignore transmission flexibility. This paper
explores the possibility of utilizing network reconfiguration as a corrective
action to reduce the transmission congestion and thereby the reduction of RES
curtailments in day-ahead scheduling. To facilitate the RES integration in the
grid, a stochastic N-1 security-constrained unit-commitment with corrective
network reconfiguration (SSCUC-CNR) is modelled. SSCUC-CNR model is studied on
a modified IEEE 24-bus system with RES. The simulation results demonstrate that
CNR not only leads to a lower cost solution by reducing network congestion but
also facilitates RES integration by reducing congestion-induced curtailments in
high penetration cases. Emission studies demonstrate that more green generators
are committed resulting in reduced carbon emissions when CNR is implemented.
