The deregulation of Taiwan electricity supply industry

Taiwan is on the brink of embarking on an ambitious reform in the electricity sector. The future electricity market of Taiwan will be operated under the framework set out in the Electricity Act Amendment. Independent system operator (ISO) will be the core body of the future market operations and its establishment will therefore be the key to the liberalization. This paper presents the proposed implementation plan based on diverse factors considered by the officials. A three steps phased introduction of Taiwan ISO is discussed. During the proposed Phase I interim market arrangements, Taipower's System Operation Department will assume the role of System Operator for the market. The dispatch rules are largely based on the existing Taipower internal procedure. As competition increases, the need for increased transparency will necessitate the establishment of a fully independent ISO in Phase II to provide the real time dispatch services. This will be completed within 2 years after the passage of the Electricity Act Amendment Bill. In the last phase of the deregulation process a multilateral market arrangement for managing energy imbalance and transmission constraints will result in better outcomes in relation to the policy objectives of security and economic efficiency. The 2-year timeframe stipulated in the Electricity Act Amendment Bill is a challenge for the Government and the industry. However, a smoothly functioning Taiwan ISO will bring benefits to the industry and the country in general.     

Optimal electricity supply: Reliability,pricing and system planning

This paper provides a state-of-the-art summary of recent developments in electricity supply reliability, pricing and system planning, with emphasis on the close interrelationships among these aspects. Economic theory indicates that net social benefits would be maximized if price was set equal to marginal cost while the marginal system costs of improving reliability were equal to the averted marginal outage costs. Attention is focused on the measurement of outage costs and a reliability optimizing model is used to develop an operational criterion for system planning in which the sum of system costs and outage costs is minimized. This approach subsumes the traditional criterion of minimizing only the system costs at an arbitrary target level of reliability. The results of a case study to test the new methodology are summarized and the use of reliability indices and techniques of estimating outage costs are also discussed.     

Scenario planning for electricity supply

Electricity generating systems using conventional electricity planning usually face demand-supply mismatch problems resulting from erroneous forecasting of the demand for electricity. Model simulation was used to investigate whether scenario planning would reduce such problems. It was found that scenario planning has the potential of reducing the cost of generating electricity by up to US$3000 million over a 15-year planning period for a medium-size supply system such as that of Thailand.     

Market power in electricity supply

Restructuring of the power industry worldwide has brought the issue of market competitiveness to the forefront. While "vertical" market power has been limited by disaggregating generation and transmission, nondiscriminatory access to the transmission system by power suppliers, and the creation of the independent system operator (ISO), "horizontal" and localized market power still survives. In the last few years, the issue of a small number of generators exercising market power has received a great deal of attention, and much has been published on how to identify and mitigate such abuse by market management measures. This paper focuses on the analysis and mitigation of market power in electricity supply     

The inquiry into electricity supply in New South Wales

In May 2007, the Premier of New South Wales (NSW) announced the establishment of an Inquiry into Electricity Supply in that State to be undertaken by the author of this paper. Fundamental to the Inquiry was the perceived need for additional baseload generating capacity, the identification of the available technologies, carbon constraints and the policy options that would encourage the private sector to undertake the required investments. Although NSW is part of the competitive National Electricity Market, State-owned generators dominate baseload supply. In addition, the State operates three electricity retailing businesses, has a monopoly on transmission and distribution, and provides price stability for NSW residential consumers through the Electricity Tariff Equalisation Fund. Overall, therefore, the State dominates the industry and, not surprisingly, potential private investors are sceptical that its market roles may be based upon criteria other than the purely commercial. The Inquiry's report, which was publicly released in September 2007, recommended sale of all State assets in both electricity generation and retail. This paper provides a rationale for that recommendation.     

The environmental and public health consequences of replacement electricity supply

The usual problem discussed by environmentalists is the total environmental impact of an electricity generating plant while it is generating electricity. However, a plant is part of a system and cannot be treated in isolation. Provided no generating shortage develops, almost the same amount of electricity will be generated in any case, but in different ways. Although a good case can be made for spending money on reducing electricity demand instead of on generating capacity, this is not well discussed in the context of an individual power station.     

Priorities in UK electricity supply research

Abstract

The ESR Network exists to coordinate and to further R&D collaboration between the UK industry and academic communities in electricity supply issues. A concerted effort has been made to establish how established academic expertise can be related to industrial plant problems and needs, resulting in a matrix that has been refined to identify clusters that may be used to guide future research strategy.     

Joint supply — demand optimization in electricity supply

In most energy sub-sectors today a basic ignorance and lack of understanding of consumer response has meant that electricity supply systems have been conceived, planned, operated and priced mainly according to the basic criterion of engineering economics, ie cost-minimization. The few benefits taken into account have been included merely as negative costs. Recently this approach has been queried by energy policy makers. The cost-minimization process could be markedly strengthened by including further data, meanwhile information is methodically being gathered on consumer response to changes in electricity price and its should soon be possible to change over to the basic criterion of economic efficiency and welfare economics. A start can already be made, with joint supply-demand optimization in respect of the planning and operation of most interconnected electricity supply systems.     

Modelling the impacts of electric vehicle recharging on the Western Australian electricity supply system

This study investigates the potential impacts of EVs on the Western Australian electricity grid, the constraints on the system’s capacity to supply electricity for EV recharging and the options for managing those potential impacts and constraints. Western Australia is geographically isolated and the electricity network has no interconnection with neighbouring regions. The State energy and vehicle markets are independent of issues occurring in neighbouring states. Western Australia is a relatively clean sample space. This study eliminates uncertainty in vehicle adoption rates from analysis by assuming that all new vehicles are EVs. This gives a worst case scenario in terms of load growth and shows that it will over 200,000 EVs, which represents 10% of the fleet, before there is any significant impact on peak demand even if charging behaviours are left unfettered. The study also shows, however, that the electricity supply and transmission industry can achieve significant short- and long-term benefits if vehicle charging behaviours are managed from the outset, through, for example, demand management or structured tariffs. In the short-term, providing incentive for off-peak recharging increases utilisation of existing transmission capacity, and cheaper, more efficient base-load generation infrastructure. In the long-term, investment in more underutilised capacity can be avoided.     

Pathways for the North European electricity supply

This paper investigates the development of the electricity-supply systems in Northern Europe (Germany, UK, Denmark, Finland, Sweden and Norway) until the year 2050. The focus is on the response to an assumed common stringent CO₂-reduction target and on the role of carbon capture and storage technologies (CCS). Special emphasis is put on turn-over in capital stock, timing of investments and the infrastructural implications of large-scale introduction of CCS. The analysis is carried out through scenario analysis with the aid of a techno-economic model, in which a case including CCS is compared to a case excluding this option. The phase out of the present capital stock (power plants) is included from the Chalmers energy infrastructure databases, which gives information on present and planned power plants down to block level for plants exceeding 10 MW net electric power. Assuming technical lifetimes for these plants yield residual capacities in each year, here referred to as the phase-out pattern. CCS technologies are assumed to become commercially available in 2020.     

The potential contribution of geothermal energy to electricity supply in Saudi Arabia

With increase in demand for electricity at 7.5% per year, the major concern of Saudi Arabia is the amount of CO₂ being emitted. The country has the potential of generating 200×10⁶ kWh from hydrothermal sources and 120×10⁶ terawatt hour from Enhanced Geothermal System (EGS) sources. In addition to electricity generation and desalination, the country has substantial source for direct application such as space cooling and heating, a sector that consumes 80% of the electricity generated from fossil fuels. Geothermal energy can offset easily 17 million kWh of electricity that is being used for desalination. At least a part of 181,000 Gg of CO₂ emitted by conventional space cooling units can also be mitigated through ground-source heat pump technology immediately. Future development of EGS sources together with the wet geothermal systems will make the country stronger in terms of oil reserves saved and increase in exports.     

The potential contribution of renewable energy to electricity supply in Saudi Arabia

Saudi Arabia has enormous oil resources. At the same time, the Kingdom has other resources, notably solar energy that may figure in future supplies of electricity. In the past several years, considerable operational experience has been gained throughout the world in the implementation of renewable energy systems of types that would be relevant to the Kingdom. This paper reviews the nature of this experience and applies it in a quantitative assessment of the costs, savings, and environmental benefits of renewable energy conducted as a part of an electric utility integrated resource planning (IRP) project in the Kingdom. Integrated resource planning is an approach that systematically evaluates potential electricity supply and demand-side resources with the aim of developing a plan that provides energy services to customers at the least societal cost. The analysis summarized in this paper has shown that, when some of the non-market benefits of renewable energy are also included in the assessment of their overall costs and benefits, a supply expansion plan that includes wind and solar resources can provide energy services for the Kingdom at a lower societal cost than a “Business-as-usual” plan utilizing only fossil-fueled generating resources.     

Optimal operational strategy for a future electricity and hydrogen supply system in a residential area

This study introduces a novel framework of an electricity and hydrogen supply system integrating with a photovoltaic power station for a residential area. The non-residential parts including the power grid and non-residential vehicles are added to ensure power balance and bring benefits, respectively. The optimal operational strategy of the proposed framework with considering uncertainties is proposed. The objective function minimizes the expected operational cost (EOC) by reducing the imported electricity from the power grid and increasing exported electricity/hydrogen to non-residential vehicles. Additionally, the demand response program (DRP) is applied in the residential load to achieve operational cost reduction. The uncertainties are modeled via various scenarios by using scenario-based stochastic optimization method. Notably, existing research for similar frameworks both lacks the consideration of uncertainties and DRP, and fails to distinguish the residential and non-residential vehicles with different charging behaviors. The results indicate that 1) The feasibility of the proposed framework is validated which can ensure the power balance of the residential area and reduce the operational cost. 2) The EOC is reduced when considering DRP.     

Entirely renewable energy-based electricity supply system (small scale & large scale)

Our future energy needs will be supplied by a combination of many different sources, ranging from small wind turbine to provide power for a single house to central power stations that provide power in very large scale fed into the national grid. Computer control systems will integrate the performance of all these systems to make sure that as much power as possible comes from environmentally friendlier sources. As alternative sources become more widely available, small scale systems meeting local needs may start to replace current large scale central power stations. The author is investigating the feasibility of an entirely renewable energy - based electricity supply system. The developed system find so many applications as it can be used as small scale power system for Remote Area Power Supply, wind energy/battery or solar energy/battery, as well as large scale for interconnection with national grid.     

A portfolio risk analysis on electricity supply planning

Conventional electricity planning selects from a range of alternative technologies based on the least-cost method without assessing cost-related risks. The current approach to determining energy generation portfolios creates a preference for fossil fuel. Consequently, this preference results in increased exposure to recent fluctuations in fossil fuel prices, particularly for countries heavily depend on imported energy.     

Optimal electricity supply reliability using customer shortage costs

This paper describes an economic cost-benefit method for determining the optimal power system capacity and reliability of electricity supply using customer shortage costs. The approach is based upon identifying a system plan that simultaneously considers cost-of-service as well as value-of-service, and maximizes the net economic benefits taking into account the interdependence between electricity reliability, price, and demand. In contrast to the existing literature on this subject, which considers only customer outage costs, this paper argues that it is the related but considerably broader notion of customer shortage cost that is more relevant in the context of optimizing the reliability of electricity supply. The paper develops a method for estimating shortage costs and sketches an integrated framework for optimizing reliability using such costs.     

生物质分布式热电冷供给系统工程技术模式设计

以山东省淄博市周村区和平社区为例,针对该区域生物质资源多元化的特点,以现有研究成果和技术开发为基础,提出了一整套新农村生物质分布式热电冷供给系统工程技术模式,分析了实施该能源供给系统的经济、环境、社会效益。分析结果显示：实施生物质分布式热电冷供给系统工程,在彻底消除生物质废弃物产生的环境污染的同时,实现了区域能源自给,形成完整的区域能源循环经济模式,其经济、环境、社会效益显著。     

解决江西电煤供需不平衡的对策分析

从江西省资源概况出发,基于2004--2008年江西统计年鉴历史数据,对全省历年电煤产运和电力发展进行了因素分析,对因电煤发展不平衡引发的能源供应紧张以及其对经济发展带来的影响进行了具体分析,提出了建立省级煤炭储备基地的设想。围绕储备基地建设设想,对项目建设进行了简单的效益分析,详细阐述了建设的必要性、可行性以及建立储备基地的措施建议和现实而长远的意义。     

Energy analysis of electricity supply and energy conservation options

A methodology is developed to compute the total energy requirements for electricity-generating systems using an input-output model that explicitly accounts for the physical flow of energy. The capital and operating requirements of 16 separate energy supply facilities are used to evaluate the total energy required by 9 alternative means of producing and delivering electricity. Evaluated electricity-generating systems rely on either fossil or nuclear energy as their fuel source. Energy payback periods are computed based on an equivalent electricity basis. These results are compared to a number of alternative capital investments to reduce energy demand. In general, the conservation options return their energy requirements sooner than the supply alternatives.