A Practical Approach to an Interim Multi-Area Economic Dispatch Using Limited Computer Resources

A straight forward and computationally efficient method is presented for calculating and sending ``economic´´ Area Control Error (ACE) signals to three operating companies in the Texas Utilities (T.U.) System. The method requires T.U. system ACE and each operating company´s total generation and then mathematically computes each area´s desired generation. The difference between the desired generation and the actual generation for each area is its´s economic ACE. The method features a sorted-table approach to economic dispatch and calculates the economic ACE every five seconds. It has been thoroughly tested and implemented on the Texas Utilities System.