Probabilitic flows for reliability evaluation of multiarea power system interconnections

The development of a solution method and computer program for the evaluation of multiarea reliability is reported. An interconnected power system is modelled as a capacitated network with probabilistic arc capacities. The proposed solution method consists of an analytic state space decomposition phase and a Monte-Carlo simulation phase. An optimization problem is solved to minimize the total computational time for the two phases. The solution of the optimal mix problem determines the termination of the decomposition phase and the size of sample for the Monte-Carlo phase. A new reliability index, the inadequate transfer capability, is introduced. This measure indicates the relative effectiveness of either increasing existing capacities or opening new interconnections between two areas. The proposed method has been incorporated into a computationally efficient production grade software package, called Remain (Reliability Evaluation of Multiarea Interconnections). The application of Remain to a seven-area example for planning-system enhancement is given. Computational-times data is also presented.