EVALUATION OF THE MARGINAL OUTAGE COSTS IN GENERATING SYSTEMS USING QUANTITATIVE POWER-SYSTEM RELIABILITY TECHNIQUES

Marginal outage costs are an important component of electricity spot p rices. This paper describes a methodology based on quantitative power system reliability techniques for calculating these costs in generatin g systems. The proposed method involves the calculation of the increme ntal expected unserved energy at a given operating reserve and lead ti me and the multiplication of this value by the average cost of unserve d energy of the generating system. The method is illustrated in this p aper by calculating the marginal outage cost profile of a small reliab ility test system. The effects of selected modelling assumptions and t he accuracy of a number of approximate methods for calculating the mar ginal outage cost are also examined. (C) 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.