Power system planning in a competitive electricity market

Exhibitor: Carla Ziser

Supervisor: Zhao Dong

Research Group: Complex and Intelligent Systems

Industry Sector: Energy and Utilities

With the advent of the new market structures in the electricity industry and the onset of deregulation and competition a new focus has been brought to bear in the planning, management and operation of power utilities. With this in mind, the possibility of developing a market for ancillary (support) services is under much consideration.

Spinning Reserve a type of ancillary service, involving the maintenance and provision of energy reserves in the event of a contingency, e.g. a generator going offline. The aim of this thesis is to develop an optimal way of scheduling Spinning Reserve, in a market that is based upon the pool model.

To do this, some decision analysis needs to be undertaken with regard to economic and security aspects. This decision analysis also needs to consider the physical constraints existing within a power system, such as generation and transmission limits. An objective function is used that takes into account security aspects, as well as the physical constraints, and the probabilistic nature of a Spinning Reserve market.

This function is then optimised (economically) by use of Genetic Algorithms - a new-age tool that is relatively less computationally intensive than others, and is capable of optimising complicated functions.

According to the requirements of the system operator an efficient, planned model has been developed which successfully manages a spinning reserve market both security-wise and economically.

Thesis Document (PDF)