Abstract :
During the recent years, a significant number of modern thermal power plants use natural gas as fuel in order to achieve reduction of their environmental impact from greenhouse gas emissions and increase their efficiency. The new plants are connected to the existing natural gas transmission network leading to a high interdependence between it and the respective electric power system. Therefore, the failure events occurring in the natural gas network can cause interruption of gas supply to one or more power generating units connected to it. This means that there will be a significant impact on the operation of the electric energy market. The purpose of this paper is to present a simulation model for quantifying the impact of failure events in the natural gas network on the operation of the respective electric energy market. For this purpose, an efficient methodology being based on the Monte Carlo sequential simulation approach is developed in order to realistically simulate the annual operation of the natural gas transmission system and deduce the failure events of the connection nodes for the gas-fired electric power plants. These failure events are taken into account in a mid-term scheduling model based on the day-ahead market clearing algorithm of the electric energy market in order to quantify their impact. The analysis of the combined system based on the Hellenic electric power system and the natural gas transmission network is presented with respect to the impact of the failure events on the electricity prices, the unit commitment and dispatch and the energy mix.
