Substantial progress has been made in recent years at improving the operation of existing generating units. While these improvements reduce the overall system production cost, they also increase sensitivity to reliability excursions. With high unit availability, relatively small changes in load can produce dramatic changes in loss of load probability. Thus, the better generating units operate, the more important is monitoring system reliability.

Reliability can be measured in many different ways. The measure chosen needs to be carefully selected to correlate with the anticipated decision. By its very nature reliability is a probabilistic function and does not lend itself well to a single deterministic measure. These factors significantly complicate using reliability as a basis for predicting the quantity of surplus (or deficit) generating capacity that may exist at any point in the future.

The growing importance of power purchases and sales, however, requires that power marketers also be provided with near-term information on the effect of market transactions on system reliability. Some level of risk is inherent in these marketing transactions – off-system sales reduce system reliability while purchases increase reliability.

PowrSym3 calculates generation reliability probabilistically, uniquely relating the probability of reliability events to potential market transactions. PowrSym3 determines the generating capability margin (surplus or deficit) associated with a specified probability of incurring a service interruption, giving the power marketing organization powerful insights into the risks inherent in making power trades.

RELIability - a powerful tool available only to PowrSym3 users.
 

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