A technique to incorporate the impacts of demand side management on generation expansion planning

Abstract

Demand Side Management (DSM) has begun to emerge as a major component of utility planning, with more utilities than ever before using it to help meet their own needs and those of their customers. DSM encompasses utility and customer activities aimed at modifying load shape, which embodies the timing and level of customer electricity demand. Future load shapes will result from the combined effect of individual DSM programs seeking specific load shape objectives. Load Duration Curve (LDC) is the vehicle through which DSM impacts are incorporated into power system planning and operation. Models of the LDC is one of the most important tools in the analysis of electric power system. The DSM will affect the peak load, the base load and total energy demand of the load duration curve. Those three impacts have to be explicitly modeled into the load duration curve for properly representing the effects of demand side management activities. However, the available models cannot properly represent the impacts of demand side management into load duration curve, because they do not explicitly model those three variables into their load duration curve. A new model that can incorporate the effects of demand side management is needed by utilities to help them with planning and operation. A new way to directly model the inverted load duration curve (ILDC) is presented in this study thus facilitating the representation of DSM impacts.

Peak Load, base load and total energy demand are the variables of the new model. Using DSM activities as case studies, the new model produced good results compared to other widely used models, in term of reliability indices (LOLP and ENS) and total energy under the load duration curve. The flexibility, simplicity and the speed of execution of the new model in calculating the reliability indices are demonstrated. The capability of the new model to calculate the capacity credit is also presented. As a result of its ability to represent energy under load duration curve, the new model is inserted into WASP computer program to calculate the production cost. Results obtained from the new model (modified WASP) compared to results from original WASP are very close. Based on these capabilities it can be claimed that the new ILDC model is a better overall model and can be used as an alternative load model in utility planning and operation.