Incorporating Resource Dynamics to Determine Generation Adequacy Levels in Restructured Bulk Power Systems

Installed capacity markets in the northeast of the United States ensure that adequate generation exists to satisfy regional loss of load probability (LOLP) criterion. LOLP studies are conducted to determine the amount of capacity that is needed, but they do not consider several factors that substantially affect the calculated distribution of available capacity. These studies do not account for the fact that generation availability increases during periods of high demand and therefore prices, common-cause failures that result in multiple generation units being unavailable at the same time, and the negative correlation between load and available capacity due to temperature and humidity. We propose a categorization of incidents in an existing bulk power reliability database to analyze the existence and frequency of independent failures and those associated with resource dynamics. We augment our findings with other empirical findings. We propose using Monte Carlo methods to model these resource dynamics. Using the IEEE Reliability Test System as a single-bus case study, we find that the LOLP results change substantially when these factors are considered. We find that better data collection is necessary to support the more comprehensive modeling of resource adequacy that we propose. In addition, we use a parallel processing method to offset the increase in computational times required to model these dynamics.