An Approach to the Analysis of Generating-Capacity Reserve Requirements

Abstract

This paper presents a flexible easy-to-use method for analyzing the generating-capacity reserve requirements of a power system. The approach described takes into account the monthly, daily, and hourly variations in system load; scheduled maintenance requirements; forced-outage performance of the generating units; and the effect of interruptible load (IL) curtailments, the extra-load capability of the generators (EL), and emergency backup support from interconnections (EB). It permits an easy qualitative and quantitative evaluation of the effect of change in any of the basic assumptions used in the analysis, such as load projection, forced-outage rate or acceptable standard of system performance, without requiring repetition of the entire calculation with a new set of data.