Hong Chen

“Perfect Dispatch” - as the measure of PJM real time grid operational performance

This paper discusses a novel approach for analysis of large scale real time grid operation performance. The PJM Interconnection energy market is one of the largest centralized markets in the world. Recently PJM deployed a newly developed application called “Perfect Dispatch” designed to provide a baseline measure of grid operational performance using retroactive real time market simulation and analysis. In the first nine months of 2009 over

Practices of reactive power management and compensation

100 million in production cost saving have been attributed to its use. This paper provides an overview of the Perfect Dispatch implementation at PJM and discusses applications and benefits of the “Perfect Dispatch”.

Risk management in PJM’s market operation

Reactive power management is essential for reliable power system operation, and also affects economic efficiency of real power dispatch. Proper compensation for providing reactive power and reactive power capability ensures an adequate, reliable and efficient supply of reactive power, and encourages sufficient investment on producing reactive power. This panel will review the reactive power management and compensation mechanism from ISOspsila role; and discuss current practices based on their impact on system operation and their economic incentives.

Practices of system security pricing

Ensuring power system reliability is among the top responsibilities of an RTO/ISO. Focusing on operating reliability, this panel will review the PJMs practices on reliability related risk management from the power system operations and market operations viewpoints, recognizing the interrelationship between system and market operations. On one hand, system study, outage coordination and reliability unit commitment directly manage the risk associated with system operating reliability; on the other hand, LMP-based congestion management and ancillary service markets are administered to support operating reliability through economic price signals. Some challenges faced by practical operation will also be discussed in the panel.

Review of Task Force “Equilibrium of electricity market efficiency and power system operation risk” panels

Due to physical constraints of electric power system, electricity markets are designed and operated based on secure power system operation. System security has to be considered together with economic efficiency in the design and operation of wholesale electricity markets. This panel will present the practices based on two major US electricity markets, and discuss the challenges in practical market operation.

Inter-operability and integration constraints in sustainable power grid

Summary form only given. Task Force “EQUILIBIRUM OF ELECTRCITY MARKET EFFICIENCY AND POWER SYSTEM OPERATION RISK” was created in 2009, focusing on the interaction between system operation and market operation, with the objective to achieve the balance between system operation risk mitigation and market efficiency. From 2009 to 2012, four panel sessions have been successfully organized under this Task Force. This presentation is going to summarize the topics covered so far, and lay out the next step.

Improve market efficiency with topology configuration: Ex-ante and ex-post

A sustainable power grid should be able to provide both environmental and economical advantages in electricity energy generation, consumption, and transaction facilitations. The smart grid inter-operability structure should be able to sustain with future energy market designs, flexible energy transactions, and new energy technologies, such as electric cars, dispersed generation, and highly penetrated renewable energy resources. Smart grid will provide more visibility and operability for relatively small scale generation/load assets into the energy markets. From todays bulk power system point of view, immediate challenges faced today include operation model identification, control signal and control schema, as well as metering solutions, which are usually with tariff regulated options. Natural resource constraints could become more sensitive factors on power grid expansions and electricity demand changes. For example, the accumulated wind power resources far away from load centers could lose their economic advantages with high transmission upgrade cost. Further, in recent practices, we have seen that the constructability of transmission projects is facing more and more environmental constraints on right-of-way options. Power engineers are not only responsible for reliable integrations, but also under the pressure of maintaining sustainable grid expansions to meet future demand growth. Practical projects and field experiences will be reviewed along with framework discussions.

Operational equilibrium of risk and economic efficiency in Real-time market

Electricity markets are operated upon reliable power system operation, where physical resources and financial transactions are committed based on variable market and system inputs. System operators need to ensure transmission reliability at all times. Transmission outages occur daily to allow reliability maintenance and integration of network upgrades. Outage windows vary with the complexity of work scopes and are constrained by various system conditions, such as applicable outage seasons, conflictions with concurrent outages, etc. Operation planning engineers usually perform ex-ante congestion management analysis to evaluate the impact of transmission outages on system security and market efficiency during the outage window, and provide recommendations on outage scheduling and congestion management. Transmission outages may induce high market operation cost when outage windows are not be able to be “optimized” and congestion occurs. In real-time operation, operators have proved the effectiveness of applying “no-cost” switching to relieve congestion when network topology configuration is applicable. Ex-post market efficiency analysis has been studied to provide operation strategy review to the operators, an effort in perfect dispatch. Ex-ante market efficiency analysis of outages faces market and operational uncertainties. Common factors include outage location and scope, outage duration, flexibility of outage rescheduling, potential confliction with concurrent outages, weather and seasonal conditions during the outages, etc. Operators need to develop robust and effective market simulation cases and tool sets to predict the impacts on production cost, congestion revenue, and other market efficiency indicators. Heuristic approaches are often applied due to the inexplicit nature of these types of studies. After-the-fact review on congestion management with no-cost transmission switching is an applicable approach in real-time operation review. However, ex-post market efficiency assessment of long duration outages or topology configuration could be a challenging task. Market input variations due to the occurred topology changes are also hard to define, which are crucial to quantify market efficiency change with outage rescheduling, or topology reconfiguration. This panel will review the above challenges with practices.

Uncertainties in real-time external modeling for state estimation: A heuristic practice

Defining and evaluating operational equilibriums in real-time market, constrained by operation risks and economical biddings, is in the center of market operation and its enhancement. For example, in the two-settlement market design, reliability unit commitment is an important stage to bridge day-ahead market with Real-time system operation, which commits additional units to cover forecasted load and operating reserve for real-time. If coupled with reliability assessment, additional steam units may be committed at this stage to mitigate additional transmission congestions and support outages. Operators and market operation analysts need constant review and follow up the dispatch decisions, which indeed reflects the operational challenges on the balance of lowest cost energy dispatch and lowest cost capacity. This panel will review the current practices and discuss the future trends.

Balance economic efficiency and operation risk

State Estimation plays the key role in real-time bulk power system reliability operation and economical market operation. Active transactions across the regional transmission systems are integrated nature of todays electricity markets. To ensure stable and adequate SE solution, EMS engineers are paying more attentions on external network models, which usually deal with real-time operation uncertainties in the neighbor systems. This panel will discuss a heuristic approach on external model analysis focusing on important tie-line post contingency flow and across-region transfer flow adequacy with sensitivity and observability indices for external model boundary cut. Practical cases will be discussed.