Electric Power Distribution in the World: Today and Tomorrow

In light of the increasing importance of distributed energy resources (DERs) in the electricity system, there is an ongoing need to understand the current status of electric power distribution across the world. This review paper compiles key information about the distribution systems in 175 countries worldwide. The findings for each country include the number, legal structure and ownership of distribution system operators, the access to electricity they provide, distribution level voltages, electric power frequency and the significance of renewable electricity generation. This study covers 99.4% of the world’s population. As of June 2018, there are around 7600 distribution system operators in these 175 countries. After reviewing today’s distribution system status, this paper also reviews the various discussions and proposals for tomorrow’s electric power distribution. The discussion covers both system operation and market platform roles as well as data management options for DSOs in the near future

Shadow Pricing of Electric Power Interruptions for Distribution System Operators in Finland

Increasing distributed generation and intermittency, along with the increasing frequency of extreme weather events, pose a serious challenge supply security in the electric power sector. Understanding the costs of interruption is vital for enhancing power system infrastructure and planning the distribution grid. Customer rights and demand response are additional reasons to study the value of power reliability. We make use of the directional distance function and shadow pricing method for a case study from Finland with the aim of calculating the cost of one minute of power interruption from the perspective of the distribution network operator. The sample consists of 78 distribution network operators from Finland based on cost and network information between 2013 and 2015

Regional Differences in Economic Impacts of Power Outages in Finland

Estimating the worth of continuity of electricity supply is of interest to industry, governments, regulators and the research community. There are numerous methods to calculate the Customer Interruption Costs (CICs). Each method has its advantages and disadvantages. We approach the problem from the Distribution System Operator (DSO) point of view and employ two existing analytical models. One model is used by the Finnish Energy Market Authority and the second one was proposed by some of the authors in a previous study. Our model offers a simple and straightforward methodology which can provide credible and objective estimations utilizing only publicly available analytical data. We made use of cost and reliability indices data of 78 DSOs in Finland from the 2016. In addition to cost estimations, we highlight regional differences in CIC estimations in different parts of Finland and provide a critical overview of the existing standard customer compensation scheme in Finland

A review on the theory of electric power reliability worth and customer interruption costs assessment techniques

As the society gets more dependent on continuous electricity supply, the impacts of disruptions in the service yield significant economic losses for all customer segments. There is crucial need for understanding the worth of reliability improvements in the power systems for planning purposes of the transmission and distribution systems. That is why, there has been an increased attention by the researchers in the field of economic worth of electricity service reliability. This review summarizes the academic work done in the fields of worth of electric power reliability and customer interruption costs assessment techniques from the year 1990 to 2015

Customer interruption costs estimations for service sectors via customer survey method: A case study

The estimations of the economic impacts of the unwanted power interruptions have been a popular area of interest among the electric power society for the last three decades. In this paper the authors put forward estimations of customer interruption costs for service sectors by the aid of a customer survey conducted in Finland. The customer survey method has been criticized and a necessity of a more sophisticated future work have been emphasised. © 2013 Praise Worthy Prize S.r.l.-All rights reserved

A comparison of direct worth and relative worth studies for outage cost estimations in industry sectors

The estimation of customer interruption costs is a challenging task. Understanding the true economic impacts of unwanted power interruptions is a must for planning purposes and for the decision making on electric energy policies. All methodologies that have been adopted to analyze the problem have strong and weak points. This paper presents the outage cost estimations for the small and medium scale industry sector, public sector and service sector customers in Finland by the aid of a customer survey study. The direct worth approach and the relative worth approach are applied for the industry sector customers and the results are compared. The results of public and service sector customers are presented by following the direct worth methodology only

Electric vehicles and batteries as domestic storage units in the united kingdom

This paper assesses the economic feasibility of Vehicle-to-Home (V2H) and domestic battery systems in the United Kingdom (UK) via calculating the savings by switching to different tariffs. To do the analysis, a UK average Electric Vehicle (EV) and domestic battery have been established; called UKEV and UKBat respectively. The UKEV characteristics were determined by taking a weighted average from the five highest selling EVs in the UK. An arithmetic mean was found for the individual UKBat features from seven models available on the UK market. The UKEV and UKBat were compared under four scenarios. These are Ofgem's two domestic electricity profile classes (PC1, PC2) and two existing time-of-use tariffs; one with two and the other with three rates during a day. At medium battery degradation rate, maximum annual savings for the consumer was estimated to be around £94 and £147 per year for the EV and battery, respectively

Cyclone Dagmar of 2011 and its impacts in Finland

The increasing frequency of the natural disasters during the last decade and their severe impacts on the electric power arose debate and led questioning the electric power reliability of the European countries. The Cyclone Dagmar of 2011, or locally known as Tapani storm, was a shocking event for all Scandinavia in terms of its impacts on the electricity supply and the related services. Although Finland had been thought to be enjoying highly reliable electric power, after 2011 the authorities started to go through radical changes to improve the supply security of the country and the Finnish Ministry of Employment and the Economy introduced a 15-year plan to avoid such undesirable outcomes of the possible natural disasters that might occur in the future. This paper summarizes and presents the events that were caused by the storm, and the storm recovery efforts spent after the incident

On the evaluation of customers interruption costs due to unexpected power outages

Supply reliability is an important factor to be considered when planning and developing modern power distribution systems. If reliability value is expressed in monetary terms, it can be used as one input parameter when optimizing the electrical distribution systems and when developing regulation. This paper analyses the customer interruption cost (CIC) evaluation techniques and presents some results of CIC due to unexpected outages, obtained by different methods. The methods first discussed are customer surveys including direct worth estimation, willingness to pay and willingness to accept methods. As another group of methods, different indirect analytical methods are considered. The cases explored are residential, industrial, commercial and public customers in Finland