Milad Doostan

Error Analysis of Customer Baseline Load (CBL) Calculation Methods for Residential Customers

Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) 745 order has created an environment that allows demand response owners to sell their load reduction in the wholesale market. One of the main challenges that independent system operators and utilities face is developing customer baseline load (CBL) calculation methods that work satisfactorily in this new environment. Consequently, it is critical that these methods need to be evaluated from the error performances perspective. In this paper, error analysis of CBL calculation methods for residential customers is carried out theoretically and empirically. To perform theoretical analysis, the utility function of customers is analyzed to determine the existence of the economic incentives for gaming and inefficient consumption as well as studying the impact of inaccuracy on the social welfare loss. Furthermore, to perform the empirical analysis, well-established CBL calculation methods, HighXofY (New York ISO, well known as NYISO), LowXofY, MidXofY, exponential moving average (New England ISO, well known as ISONE), and regression are first introduced and, then, utilized to calculate the CBL. A dataset consisting of 262 residential customers is used for this analysis. In addition, the error analysis is performed using accuracy and bias metrics. To reach a valid conclusion about the overall performance of CBL methods, an economic analysis of a hypothetical peak time rebate (PTR) program is carried out. According to the results of the case study, the utility pays at least half of its revenue as a rebate solely due to inaccuracy of CBL methods. In addition, it is demonstrated that PTR creates inefficiencies in the residential sector because of the failure of CBL calculation methods to accurately predict the customers’ load profile on the event day.

An investigation of the relationship between accuracy of customer baseline calculation and efficiency of Peak Time Rebate program

In this paper, the relationship between accuracy of Customer Baseline (CBL) calculation and efficiency of Peak Time Rebate (PTR) program for residential customers is investigated. To perform the analysis, well-established CBL calculation methods, HighXofY(NYISO), LowXofY, MidXofY, exponential moving average(ISONE) and regression are first introduced and then utilized to calculate the CBL. A dataset consisting of 262 residential customers is used for this analysis. In addition, the error analysis is performed using accuracy and bias metrics. Furthermore, to reach a valid conclusion about overall performance of CBL methods, an economic analysis of a PTR program is carried out. According to the results, in the case study, utility pays at least half of its revenue as a rebate merely due to the inaccuracy of CBL methods. In addition, it is shown that PTR causes a lot of inefficiencies in the residential sector because of the failure of CBL calculation methods to predict the customers load profile on event day.

Concurrent placement of distributed generation resources and capacitor banks in distribution systems

In this paper, a new approach for placement of both Distributed Generation (DG) units and capacitor banks in distribution systems is proposed. The goal is to 1) reduce the total real and reactive power losses, 2) improve the voltage profile, and 3) improve the power factor for the total demand. The method uses a bus-ranking scheme based on a weighted sum of indices representative of the impacts that a DG unit or capacitor bank would have in terms of the three aforementioned objectives. Moreover, the introduced indices provide a quantitative measure to identify whether placing a DG unit or a capacitor bank is more beneficial at each bus. In order to assess the performance of the proposed method, a 49-bus distribution system is introduced. The method is applied on the test system and best locations for allocation of DG units and capacitor banks on each branch are identified. Besides, a comparison between the performance of DG units and capacitor banks at each bus is noted. At the end, by examining the resulting real and reactive power losses, voltage profile and power factor, it is demonstrated that the proposed method successfully accomplishes its objectives.

Including surge arresters in the lightning performance analysis of 132kV transmission line

Line arresters are considered as an effective way to improve the lightning performance of transmission lines, especially in parts of line that suffer from high soil resistivity and lightning ground flash density. This paper presents results of the application of line surge arresters on the 132KV double circuit transmission line in EMTP-RV and all the practical scenarios for installation of surge arresters. The study has shown that a significant level of improvement can be reached by installing arresters at all or only some of the line phases. It can increase the strength of the line to withstand lightning currents up to -292kA. the probability of having this lightning current, is practically zero.

A data-driven analysis of outage duration in power distribution systems

This paper presents a data-driven approach for exploring outage duration in power distribution systems. The primary goals are to analyze and interpret the outage duration according to the underlying causes and to identify significant variables that strongly impact the outage duration. To carry out this study, actual outage data collected by a major utility company that has operations in the southeastern US is utilized. First, practical issues associated with the outage data set are discussed, and necessary data pre-processing tasks are carried out. Afterward, two types of analysis, namely statistical and visual analytics are conducted to investigate several features that could contribute to outage durations. Also, field engineering insights are provided to interpret the quantitative results. Finally, the importance of all features is examined by employing a data analytics algorithm and the most important features are identified. The results of this paper could be used by utilities to enhance their outage management systems and to gain valuable information for carrying out essential preventive maintenance for the purpose of reducing the duration of future outages.

Towards the Interactive Effects of Demand Response Participation on Electricity Spot Market Price

Abstract The electricity market is threatened by supply scarcity, which may lead to very sharp price spikes in the spot market. On the other hand, demand-side’s activities could effectively mitigate the supply scarcity and absorb most of these shocks and therefore smooth out the price volatility. In this paper, the positive effects of employing demand response programs on the spot market price are investigated. A demand-price elasticity based model is used to simulate the customer reaction function in the presence of a real time pricing. The demand achieve by DR program is used to adjust the spot market price by using a price regression model. SAS software is used to run the multiple linear regression model and MATLAB is used to simulate the demand response model. The approach is applied on one week data in summer 2014 of Connecticut in New England ISO. It could be concluded from the results of this study that applying DR program smooths out most of the price spikes in the electricity spot market and considerably reduces the customers’ electricity cost.

An analysis of open-phase fault in power generation station

This paper attempts to investigate and analyze the electrical characteristics present on the power grid when an open-phase event occurs at an off-site transformer. In order to conduct such task, this paper uses transformer, load, and connection data obtained from a real power plant to simulate several different power system configurations and analyzes various model responses in EMTP-RV software. Several testing scenarios that encompass a variety of loading conditions that can be encountered at the power plant are also defined. At the end, open phase simulation for these scenarios is carried out and all results are presented and discussed in detail.

Investigation of naturally aged timing relays' service life by employing thermally accelerated aging

This paper presents a study on naturally aged timing relays. This study employs thermally accelerated aging method. This method includes various inspection, surveillance and monitoring (ISM) tests to identify and characterize the process of material and component degradation during the service which leads to the estimation of service life for the target relays. After applying the aforementioned tests, several observations are made and the results are provided. Also, some recommendations are made at the end to improve the thermally accelerated aging analysis in the future.

Investigating the lightning effect on compact transmission lines by employing Monte Carlo method

This paper examines the outage rate caused by lightning strokes on compact transmission lines (TL). Compact and conventional transmission lines are different in terms of design and structure. Due to such differences, the previous lightning performance studies on conventional TL are useless in understanding the lightning performance of compact TL; hence, such studies have to be updated. In this paper, the aforementioned differences have been taken into the consideration. The lightning performance of compact TL has been studied by application of Monte Carlo method. Moment method is used to determine tower surge impedance by SuperNEC software and an approximate model has been introduced for tower modeling in EMTP-RV. After the accurate modeling of all components, backflashover analysis has been performed and at the end, the number of outages in the simulated sample size has been presented.

Probabilistic approach in evaluation of backflashover in 230kV double circuit transmission line

In order to study the problems posed by lightning stroke on vastly exposed transmission lines, it is essential to study different lightning overvoltage phenomena. One of the most significant electrical transients caused by lightning is backflashover. In this paper, by applying Monte Carlo method and considering accurate models of transmission line, grounding system and physical model of breakdown in insulator gap, the backflashover is studied on a 230 kV double circuit transmission line. To apply the proposed approach, the selected case study is simulated in EMTP-RV software and the results are presented.