Power System Reliability

& Planning

Adarsh Saini
 Course Details
• Reference Books:
1. R.L. Sullivan “Power System Planning”, Tata McGraw
Hill Publishing Company Ltd.
2. Roy Billinton & Ronald N. Allan “Reliability Evaluation
of Power System”, Springer Publication.
3. T. W. Berrie “Electricity Economics & Planning”, Peter
Peregrinus Ltd., London.
4.Dasari, S., Electric Power System Planning, IBT
Publishers (1999).
5. Pabla, A.S., Electric Power Distribution, Tata
McGrawHill (2008).

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 Why take this course?
• Issues related to the planning and evaluation
of an electric power system need to be
studied for successful design of a new system,
or improvement of an existing one.
• This course will provide the background
material to prepare the student for analyzing
various elements that constitute the power
system planning function.

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 Index
• System Planning:
• Introduction
• Objectives
• Factors affecting to System Planning
• Short Term Planning
• Medium Term Planning
• Long Term Planning
• Reactive Power Planning.
• Load forecasting:
• Classification and characteristics of loads.
• Approaches to load forecasting.
• Forecasting methodology.
• Energy forecasting.

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 System
Planning
• Electric power system is one of the man-made
largest scale systems.
• Evolved over many decades, from a low power
generator, serving a limited area, to highly
interconnected networks, serving a large number
of countries, or even continents.
• Running this very large system is a real difficult
task.
• The past experiences are always used for efficient
operation and planning of the system.

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 System
Planning
• Thinking of the current and the future states of a
power system are called operation and
planning, respectively.
• The word planning stems of the transitive verb to plan,
meant as to arrange a method or scheme beforehand
for any work, enterprise, or proceeding.
• We are going to discuss the power system planning
problem in terms of the issues involved from various
viewpoints; the methods to be used; the elements to
be affected; the time horizon to be observed, etc.

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 Power System Elements
• A typical power system is comprised of enormous
number of elements.
• The elements may vary from a small lamp switch to a
giant generator.
• The main elements of interest from planning point of
view are:
• Generation facilities
• Transmission facilities
• – Substations
• – Network (lines, cables)
• Loads

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 Power System Structure

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 Power System Structure

Keller, J. & Kroposki, Benjamin. (2021). Understanding Fault Characteristics of Inverter-Based Distributed Energy Resources. 10.2172/97144
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 Power System Elements
• Due to various voltages, transformers are
allocated throughout the network in the
substations.
• A 400 kV substation may comprise of four 400
kV:230 kV transformers.
• Each substation is also equipped with circuit
breakers, current and potential transformers,
protection equipment, etc.

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Layout representation of a typical
substation

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 Power System Studies, a Time-
• horizon
Scenario: it is foreseen Perspective
that the predicted load in
10 years from now, may be served provided that
a new power plant is built.
• Power System expert has to decide on required
capacity, type and where the plant has to be
connected to the network.
• Once decided appropriately, its constructing has
to be started ahead of time, so that the plant is
available in 10 years time.
• This is a typical long-term study of power
systems

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 Power System Studies, a Time-
• horizon
Scenario: A transmission Perspective
line, passing
through a mountainous area, is planned for
construction.
• Once built, the line may be subject to harsh weather
and severe lightning.
• Lightning is a very fast phenomena and affects the
system within nanoseconds.
• Designer should plan for such contingency, by proper
modeling the system in these very fast situations.
• Performing several studies to ensure that the line does
not fail, if such lightning happens in practice.
• This is a typical very short-term study of power
systems.
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 Maintenance Scheduling
Power System Studies, a Time-horizon Perspective

• Assume that sufficient generation and transmission

facilities are available for serving the loads.
• If the plants are not maintained properly, they may fail
in severe loading conditions.
• Power system decision maker should perform a 1 week
to 1 year study to decide, in advance, on maintaining
power system elements (power plants, transmission
lines, etc.).
• Decision maker should know which elements are not
available within the current year, so next decision will
be based only on available elements.
• This type of study is called maintenance scheduling.

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 Operational Planning
Power System Studies, a Time-horizon Perspective
• The operational phase starts from 1 week to
minutes. These types of studies may be
generally classified as:
• Hours to 1 week (Unit commitment)
• Several minutes to 1 hour (Economic
dispatch, Optimal Power Flow
(OPF))
• Minutes (Automatic Generation Control
(AGC)).
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Power System Studies, a Time-
horizon Perspective

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 CASE STUDY
Power System Studies, a Time-horizon Perspective
• Suppose from ten power plants of a system, in the coming
week, three are not available due to scheduled
maintenances .
• Decision maker considers using the available plants for
serving the predicted load for each hour of the coming
week.
• Decision maker should decide on the generation level of
each plant, as the generation capacities of all plants may be
noticeably higher than the predicted load.
• This type of study is commonly referred to as unit
commitment.
• Decision may be based on some technical and/or
economical considerations.

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 CASE STUDY
Power System Studies, a Time-horizon Perspective

https://etap.com/product/unit-commitment
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 CASE
STUDY
Power System Studies, a Time-horizon Perspective

• The sample final decision may be in the following

form:
• Commit unit 1 (generation level: 100 MW), unit 3
(generation level: 150 MW) and unit 6
(generation level: 125 MW), to serve the
predicted load of 375 MW at hour 27 of the week
(1 week = 168 h).
• Commit unit 1 (generation level: 75 MW) and unit
3 (generation level: 120 MW), to serve the
predicted load of 195 MW at hour 35 of the
week.

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 CASE STUDY
Power System Studies, a Time-horizon Perspective
• Complete list for all hours of the week is generated.
• Close to real time the actual load may not be equal to
the predicted load.
• For instance, that the actual load at hour 27 to be 390
MW, instead of 375 MW.
• A further study has to be performed in that hour to
allocate the actual load of 390 MW among the
available plants at that hour (units 1, 3 and 6).
• This type of study may be based on some technical
and/or economical considerations and is commonly
referred to as economic dispatch or Optimal Power
Flow (OPF).

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 CASE
STUDY

• Power System Studies, a Time-horizon Perspective

• For faster time periods, the next step is to

automatically control the generation of the plants
(for instance units 1, 3 and 6) via telemetry signals
to required levels, to satisfy the load of 390 MW at
hour 27.
• This task is normally referred to as Automatic
Generation Control (AGC) and should be
performed, periodically (say in minutes); as
otherwise, the system frequency may undesirably
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change.
 CASE STUDY
Power System Studies, a Time-horizon Perspective
• For faster time periods, Power system dynamics
studies are performed ( in milliseconds to
seconds).
• Effects of components such as the power plants
excitation systems and governors may be significant.
• Two typical examples are stability studies (for
example, small signal, large signal, voltage stability,
etc.) and Sub-Synchronous Resonance (SSR)
phenomenon.
• For power system transient studies, the time period of
interest is from milliseconds to nanoseconds or even
picoseconds (studies on lightning, switching transients)

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Power System Studies, a Time-
horizon Perspective

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 Power System Planning Issues
• Power system planning is a process in which the
aim is to decide on new as well as upgrading
existing system elements, to adequately satisfy
the loads for a foreseen future.
• The elements may be
 Generation facilities
 Substations
 Transmission lines and/or cables
 Capacitors/Reactors
Etc.

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 Power System Planning Issues
• The decision should be
 Where to allocate the element (for instance, the
sending and receiving end of a line) ?
 When to install the element ?
 What to select, in terms of the element
specifications (for instance, number of bundles
and conductor type)?
• Obviously, the loads should be adequately
satisfied.

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 Power System Planning Issues
• Static Versus Dynamic Planning
• Static planning focuses on planning for a
single stage.
• Dynamic planning simultaneously addresses
planning for multiple stages at a time.
• Semi-dynamic, quasi-static or quasi-dynamic
planning.

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 Power System Planning Issues
• Transmission Versus Distribution Planning
• Interfaces between the generations and the loads may
comprise of several voltages, such as 20, 63, 132, 230, 400,
500 kV or evenhigher.3
 Normal industrial practice to classify these voltages to
 Transmission (for example, 230 kV and higher)
 Sub-transmission (for example, 63, 132 kV, and similar)
• Distribution (for example, 20 kV and 400).
• Distribution level is often planned; or at least operated,
radially while transmission level is highly meshed.
• Transmission planning is generally separated from
distribution planning.

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 Power System Planning Issues
• Long-term Versus Short-term Planning
• Case Study: For the peak loading condition of the
coming year, a power system utility expert notices that
from the two lines, feeding a substation, one would be
overloaded by 10% of its rating, while, the other would
be loaded by 60% of its rating.
• If control device is installed on one line, the load
distribution may be balanced on both lines.
• Once decided, the installation process of this device can be
performed in such a way that no problem arises for the
coming year.
• This is a typical short term transmission planning decision.

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 Power System Planning Issues
• Long-term Versus Short-term Planning.
• Load forecasting for the coming years shows that with all already
available and planned generations, there would be a shortfall of
generation in 9 years from now, onward.
• After a careful study, the planner decides on adding a new 2*500
MW steam power plant at a specific bus in that year.
• Its construction should start well in advance so that it would be
available at the required time.
• This decision is a typical long-term (9-year) transmission planning
decision.
• Normally <1 year falls into the operational planning and
operational issues in which the aim is typically to manage and
operate available resources in an efficient manner.
• More than that falls into the planning stages.

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 Load
Forecasting
• First crucial step for any planning study is to predict the
consumption for the study period: load forecasting.
• In a short-term load forecasting, for predicting the load
for instance, of the next week, we come across
predicting the load for each hour of the coming week.
• Determining factors may be weather conditions,
special TV programs and similar.
• In a long-term load forecasting predict the
peak loading conditions of the coming years.
• Determining factors may be population rate increase,
GDP (Gross Domestic Product) and similar terms have
dominant effects.

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 Generation Expansion Planning
• After load prediction, next step is to
determine the generation requirements to
satisfy the load.
• An obvious simple solution is to assume a
generation increase equal to load increase. I
• If the peak load would be 40,000 MW and at
that time, the available generation is 35,000
MW, an extra generation of 5,000 MW would
be required.

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 Generation Expansion Planning
• What types of power plants do we have to install (thermal,
gas turbine, nuclear, etc.)?
• Where do we have to install the power plants (distributed
among 5 specific buses, 10 specific buses, etc.)?
• What capacities do we have to install (5 * 1000 MW, or 2 *
1000 MW and 6 * 500 MW, or …)?
• As there may be an outage on a power plant (either existing
or new), should we install extra generations to account for
these situations? If yes, what, where and how?
• This is a very complex problem commonly referred to
as Generation Expansion Planning (GEP) problem.

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 Substation Expansion
Planning
• After load prediction, generation requirements are calculated.
• Determine of substation requirements is next step.
• Substation requirement may be in terms of
1. Expanding the existing ones,
2. Installing some new ones.
This is referred to as Substation Expansion Planning (SEP).
• SEP is difficult task as multiple factors are involved such as
 Constraints due to the upward grid, feeding the substations,
 Constraints due to the downward grid, through which the
substation supplies the loads,
 Constraints due to the factors to be observed for the substation
itself.

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 Network Expansion Planning
• Network is a media for transmitting the
power, efficiently and in a reliable manner
from generation resources to the load centers.
• Network Expansion Planning (NEP) is a
process in which the network (transmission
lines, cables, etc.) specifications are
determined.

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 Reactive Power Planning
• In running NEP, the voltages are assumed to be flat (i.e. 1 p.u.) and
reactive power flows are ignored.
• The main reason is the fact that constructing a line is not
considered as a main tool for voltage improvement.
• Moreover, the running time of NEP can be exceptionally high or
even the solution may not be possible if AC Load Flow (ACLF) is
employed.
• That is why in practice, NEP is normally based on using Direct
Current Load Flow (DCLF).
• Upon running GEP, SEP and NEP, the network topology is
determined.
• However, it may perform unsatisfactorily, if a detailed AC Load Flow
(ACLF) is performed, based on existing algorithms

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 Reactive Power Planning
• To solve such a difficulty, static reactive power
compensators, such as capacitors and reactors may be
used.
• Moreover, some more flexible reactive power resources
such as SVCs may also be required.
• The problem is, however
• Where to install these devices?
• What capacities do we have to employ?
• What types do we have to use?
• These types of studies are commonly referred to as
Reactive Power Planning (RPP) and are clear required steps
in a power system planning process.

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 Planning in Presence of
Uncertainties
• The electric power industry has drastically changed over the last two
decades. It
• has moved towards a market oriented environment in which the electric
power is
• transacted in the form of a commodity. Now the generation, transmission
and
• distribution are unbundled and may belong to separate entities.22 The
planner can
• not, for instance, dictate where the generation resources have to be
allocated. In
• this way, NEP problem is confronted by an uncertain GEP input. So, how
NEP can
• be solved, once the input data is uncertain?
• This was a simple example of the problems that current power system
planners
• face. Obviously, some types of solutions have to be found.

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Adarsh Saini
 Referenc
e
• Electric Power System Planning: Issues, Algorithms and Solutions, By Hossein Seifi
and Mohammad Sadegh Sepasian, e-ISBN 978-3-642-17989-1, DOI 10.1007/978-
3- 642-17989-1 Springer Heidelberg Dordrecht London New York Springer-Verlag
Berlin Heidelberg 2011

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