Introduction  In this paper, the impact of natural gas system on the short-term scheduling with high penetration of renewable energy is illustrated and analyzed.

  Method  The natural gas infrastructure constraints were integrated into the security-constrained unit commitment model, which minimized the expected operation cost while considering the variable wind power generation. Benders decomposition was applied to solve the problem with non-linear natural gas network constraints.

  Result  Illustrative examples with 6-bus power system with 6-node natural gas system demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed approach for analyzing the impact natural gas system on system scheduling with volatile renewable energy.

  Conclusion  An optimal electricity portfolio of renewable and natural gas will continue to be an important direction for future energy system development.