Qualitative comparison of techniques for evaluating performance of short term power system reliability management.

Abstract

Adequate performance evaluation of different short term reliability management approaches and criteria is crucial in order to convince transmission system operators to substitute or complement the currently used N-1 criterion with more efficient, alternative approaches. This paper qualitatively compares existing evaluation techniques. These techniques are also applied in other contexts, such as reliability assessment, which have similarities with performance evaluation, but differ in some crucial aspects. Evaluation techniques typically make a trade-off between accuracy, complexity and computational burden. Easy-to-use, non-sequential, analytical state enumeration techniques can be useful to obtain indicative results. More computationally intensive, sequential simulation techniques are on the other hand better suited for in depth analysis, as they allow to take into account the dynamic character of the decision making process under evaluation. Emulation seems promising from a theoretical perspective, but handling the complex, multi-dimensional nature of short term reliability management is a challenge.