Long-run incremental cost pricing considering uncertain future load growth

The importance of efficient and effective charging methodologies to regulatory authorities has resulted in a significant amount of research into methods for deriving economic charges. The majority of the previous work is however limited on the assumption that a given future scenario or a fixed load growth rate, and the fundamental problem of uncertain future load growth rates in charging methodologies imposes great difficulties on precise assessing of charges. In this paper, a novel methodology of evaluating long-run incremental charges with uncertain load growth rate is proposed to handle the uncertainty of load growth rate. Fuzzy logic concept is utilized here to model uncertain load growth rate, and then it is incorporated with long-run incremental cost (LRIC) methodology to calculate charges. The membership functions of years which take circuit to be fully loaded and LRIC charges are deduced by employing the theory of fuzzy extension method. A simple example is given to testify the proposed concept and some important conclusion are presented at last. It is found that compared with original LRIC method new method considering fuzzy load growth rate can effectively model uncertain instinct of load growth rate.