Assessing mid-continent area power pool capacity adequacy including transmission limitations

This paper presents the results of a multiarea generating capacity adequacy assessment performed by the composite system reliability working group (CSRWG) for the mid-continent area power pool´s (MAPP´s) United States (US) thermal system. The impact of transmission resource limitations within the MAPP region on the system reserve margin has been studied. In addition, the generating unit forced outage rate uncertainty, extreme hot summer loading conditions and the load forecast uncertainty are explicitly modeled in the study. The basic objective of this study was to determine the reserve capacity obligation (RCO) for the MAPP-US thermal system for the years 2003, 2006, 2009 and 2012. Similar studies have been performed in 1991 and 1994, and one of the purposes of this study was to determine whether or not the recommendations from the previous studies were still valid. The results of the study confirmed the current RCO level for the MAPP-US thermal system