Peak Shaving Considering Streamflow Uncertainties

The main thrust of this paper is peak shaving with a Stochastic hydro model. In peak sharing, the amount of hydro energy scheduled may be a minimum but it serves to replace less efficient thermal units. The sample system is die Kainji hydro plant and the thermal units of the National Electric Power Authority. The random nature of the system load is re-organized by using a Markov load model. The results include a modification of the expected load to be served by the array of thermal units, and the optimum schedule for the economic operation of the plant as a peaking load.

Electricity Pricing in Less Developed Countries: Incorporating Economic Efficiency and Equity Objectives

Electricity tariffs suffer heavy distortions in many developing countries because of undue government influence. However, in view of increasing financing constraints in recent times and the need for increased energy efficiency, private sector participation in the electric utility industry in these countries is crucial for the future success of the industry. Consequently, to encourage private sectors efforts, electricity tariffs must be adjusted to acceptable economic levels. This paper presents the use of expected system load duration curve (LDC) and power plant input-output function to establish the shadow price for electricity for a study period. The paper also examines how this marginal opportunity cost (MOC) may be adjusted to capture equity objectives. The use of LDC and actual generating unit production function offers the following advantages: better perception of price feedback effects and the ability to incorporate economic despatch into energy shadow prices. Furthermore, with the use of LDC and system generating unit capacity outage function, it is possible to establish price probabilities for the planning period

Unit Commitment: A New Truncated Method of Unit Combination

The utility industry can reduce its fuel cost by proper commitment of schedulable generating unit. In this paper, a new truncation of unit combinations is proposed which will greatly reduce the number of unit combinations to be considered for large systems. A dynamic programming optimization based digital computer program has been developed for this new approach.Data obtained from the National Electric Power Authority (NEPA) has been used to test the efficacy of this approach. The results indicate a significant reduction in cost over the method of just considering the first N possible unit combinations generated by binary powers