Value based reliability investment in a modern power system

可靠性评估在发电容量规划和输电网规划中起着重要的作用，以达到最优的投资决策。备选规划方案的可靠性和经济性往往是相互竞争的，达到一定可靠性水平所需的投资成本应与可靠性提高所带来的社会效益相适应。电力公司通常采用既定的可靠性标准来确定适当的扩容项目。作为电力公司规划标准的可靠性水平被认为在可靠性和经济性之间提供了一个可接受的平衡。许多公用事业公司使用每年0.1天的负荷预期损失（LOLE）作为发电规划的可靠性标准。其他公用事业，包括SaskPower，以其他形式利用发电规划标准。假设一个标准，例如每年0.1天的LOLE，适用于所有本质上不同的电力系统，这可能是不现实的。对给定的电力系统进行可靠性成本和可靠性价值综合评估，以确定最合适的可靠性评估准则。研究人员建议与SaskPower合作，利用客户调查来确定与发电扩展计划相关的投资成本和预计扩展计划的可靠性价值。客户调查成本高、耗时长，而且不受公众欢迎，但在世界不同地区零星地进行了调查。在一段时间内确定的可靠性标准可能在几年后不再有效，因为电力系统在物理、运营和市场结构方面正在迅速变化，这主要是由放松管制、可再生能源增长、新兴微电网和智能电网倡议推动的。建议的研究还将开发一种基于电力系统可靠性和经济学基本原则的方法，以估计适当的可靠性标准，而无需进行频繁的客户调查。这些方法将进一步扩展为提供工具来进行基于价值的可靠性评估，这将为决定新系统组件和技术的投资提供有价值的输入。

Reliability assessment plays a major role in planning generating capacity and transmission network in order to arrive at optimum investment decisions. The reliability and economics of alternative planning options often compete with each other, and the investment cost required to achieve a certain level of reliability should be justified by the benefits derived by society with the improved reliability. Electric power utilities routinely apply established reliability criteria to determine appropriate capacity expansion projects. A reliability level approved as the planning criterion for an electric utility is perceived to provide an acceptable balance between reliability and economics. Many utilities use a loss of load expectation (LOLE) of 0.1 days per year as their reliability criteria in generation planning. Other utilities, including SaskPower, utilize generation planning criteria in other forms. It may be unrealistic to assume that one criterion, such as the LOLE of 0.1 days per year, fits all power systems that are inherently different. A comprehensive reliability cost and reliability worth evaluation is required to determine the most suitable criterion for a given power system. The researcher proposes to work jointly with SaskPower to determine the investment costs associated with generation expansion plans and the reliability worth of the projected expansion plans using customer surveys. Customer surveys are costly, time consuming and not favorably received by the public, but have been sporadically conducted in different parts of the world. A reliability criterion determined during a period of time may no longer be valid after a few years since power systems are rapidly changing in physical, operational and market structures which are mainly driven by de-regulation, renewable energy growth, emerging micro-grids and smart-grid initiatives. The proposed research will also develop a methodology based on fundamental principles of power system reliability and economics to estimate appropriate reliability criterion without having to carryout frequent customer surveys. These methods will be further extended to provide tools to conduct value based reliability evaluation that will provide valuable input in deciding investment in new system components and technologies.