Reliability and cost assessment of power transmission networks in the competitive electrical energy market

Electric power systems are increasingly involved in the competitive electrical energy market where several players have access to the transmission networks even though in a regulated way. The purpose of this paper is to present an improved computational method and the associated computer program RACTRS that can be used for the reliability and cost analysis of power transmission networks that accommodate transmission transactions. This is a method that is based on a Monte-Carlo sequential simulation approach and gives an increased emphasis in the realistic and efficient representation of the real design and operational characteristics and practices applied by the electric utilities today. For this purpose, the operating aspects of wheeling transactions are integrated into the developed method together with a technique for tracing the power flows through the meshed transmission networks. An extended set of appropriate reliability and cost indices is calculated for each load-point of interest, the entire system and each wheeling transaction under consideration. The analysis of a system based on the IEEE-RTS is also included for a number of studies representing the various operating and design characteristics.