Web-based Real-time Monitoring System To Enhance The Participation Of An Industrial Power System In A Restructured Utility Industry

Abstract

The opening of the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) grid to wholesale competition began in 1996 that initiated the first stage of deregulation in Texas. In order to relieve generation and transmission constraints, load reduction is considered as a form of available energy and spinning reserve. Afterward, power system becomes more dynamic and creates more opportunities for both electricity suppliers and consumers. Currently, both power supplier and demand consumer can participate in the energy and ancillary services (AS) markets to bid/offer for their energy, capacity, and demand in the ERCOT markets. In order to act as an effective market participant, understanding the real time plant operation structure, load characteristics and market prices becomes key factor for industrial power plant to establish flexible and realistic bidding strategy in the power auction markets to maximize the profit, especially for those with in-house power generation and interruptible demand. This dissertation develops a web-based real-time monitoring system to enhance the participation of an industrial power plant to a restructured electric market. This system has two main functions. One is dynamic performance monitoring system (DPMS) which performs the regular system operation monitoring, such as system power flow, frequency, tie-line flow oscillation, transformer temperature, and circuit breaker status. Event recording, database storage and report generation functions are also included. The other is dynamic cable rating system (DCRS) which monitors the overhead/underground cable temperature and estimates the system available ampacity by considering the cable loading, forecasting temperature, balancing energy market, and ancillary services markets prices. This newly developed DCRS is the first attempt to incorporate forecasting temperature information for cable rating estimation. Unlike traditional power monitoring system, this system not only focuses on the system operation monitoring but also considers the economic factors, such as power market price and weather information to provide overall system information for market manager. Several distinct features, for instance, low cost GPS timestamp, web-based remote access, dynamic cable rating, available ampacity estimation, and real time power market prices information are taken into account to offer the convenience, accessibility and efficient operation strategies to the management system. Through this newly developed monitoring system, industrial power company is able to establish bidding strategy to maximize its profit in the restructured power markets without jeopardizing system operation.