Available Transfer Capability

OASIS (Open Access Same Time

Information System)
✓ OASIS permits posting, viewing, uploading, and downloading of
transmission transfer capability in standardized protocols.

✓ The data posted on OASIS should clearly identify what service is

available, which requests were accepted, denied, interrupted or
curtailed, permitting business decisions to be made solely from the
OASIS-derived information.

✓ OASIS would enable any transmission customer or its designated

agent to communicate requests for trading the available transfer
capability.
✓ A transmission customer is any eligible customer that can or does
execute a transmission service agreement or can or does receive
transmission service.

✓ Designated agent is any entity that performs actions or functions

on behalf of Transmission Providers and Transmission Customers
required under TP tariffs.

✓ OASIS concept is a clever tool invented and developed by the

electric power industry sectors to manage and disseminate the
information that would increase the competition behavior in this
industry, there are still some uncertainties in its future and
implementation.

✓ The initial successes of OASIS were accompanied by serious

operating problems, which necessitated additional developments
for supporting competitive wholesale electricity markets.
⚫ Major Types of information posted on OASIS include:
⚫ Available transfer capability (ATC),
⚫ Total transfer capability (TTC),
⚫ Ancillary service offerings and prices,
⚫ Transmission service products and prices,
⚫ Transmission service requests and responses,
⚫ Facility status information,
⚫ Transmission service schedules,
⚫ Transmission-related communications.
 Available Transfer Capability (ATC)
✔ Available transfer capability (ATC) is a terminology that is used to
define and calculate meaningful measures of transfer capability of
an interconnected transmission network.

✔ Transfer capability in MW is a direction-specific measure that

indicates the ability of interconnected electric systems to move or
transfer power in a reliable manner from one area (i.e., an
individual electric system, power pool, control area, sub-region) to
another over exiting transmission lines (or paths) between those
areas under specified system conditions.

✔ Since the transfer capability is directional in nature, ATC from area

1 to Area 2 is not equal, in most cases, to ATC from Area 2 to Area
1, i.e., ATC1→2 ≠ ATC 2→1
✔ Available Transfer capability is the measure of the ability of
interconnected electric systems to reliably move or transfer power
from one area to another under specified system conditions.

✔ In other words, it is the measure of residual transfer capability in

the physical transmission network for the purpose of further
commercial activity over existing transmission commitments.

✔ ATC values are the key to competitive electricity markets as indices

that determine whether proposed particular transactions of electric
power between participants could be approved or not.
✔ In a deregulated power system structure, power producers and
customers share a common transmission network for transferring
power from the point of generation to the point of consumption.
✔ All parties in this open access environment may try to produce the
energy from the cheaper source for greater profit margin, which
may lead to overloading and congestion of certain corridors of the
transmission network.
✔ This may result in violation of line flow, voltage and stability limits
and thereby undermine the system security.
✔ Utilities therefore need to determine adequately their “Available
Transfer Capability (ATC)” to ensure that system reliability is
maintained while serving a wide range of bilateral and multilateral
transactions.
✔ The electric transmission utilities are required to post the
information of ATC of their transmission network through the open
access same time information system (OASIS).
✔ ATC between and within areas of the interconnected power system
and ATC for critical transmission paths between these areas would
be continuously updated and posted changes in scheduled power
transfers between the areas.

✔ ATC information is significant to the secure operation of

deregulated power systems as it reflects physical realities of the
transmission system such as customer demand level, network
paradigm, generation dispatch and transfer between neighboring
systems.

✔ According to the North American Electric Reliability Council’s

(NERC)’s definition, ATC depends on several parameters (i.e., total
transfer capability (TTC), transmission reliability margin (TRM), and
capacity benefit margin (CBM).

✔ Among these parameters, TRM and CBM are the factors that
account for the uncertainty and reliability in the power system.
✔ Transfer capability is usually calculated based on off-line computer
load-flow simulations of the operating conditions.

✔ Off-line calculations are used due to the fact that a large amount
of computations is needed for calculation.

✔ The computation of transfer capability is based on linear and non-

linear based methods, e.g., power flow methods and continuation
power flow methods.

✔ The nonlinear power flow method is usually time consuming as

compared to continuation power flow mehtod.
✓ Recently, new techniques such as sensitivity based, linear and
generalized search methods have been proposed to reduce the
computation time.

✓ Several factors are considered during computations such as

projected customer demands, generation dispatch, system
configuration, base case schedule transfers, and the contingency
cases that reflect the degree of required system security.
 ATC PRINCIPLES

1. ATC calculations must produce commercially viable results. ATCs

produced by the calculations must give a reasonable and
dependable indication of transfer capabilities available to the electric
power market.

2. ATC calculations must recognize time-variant power flow conditions

on the entire interconnected transmission network. In addition, the
effects of simultaneous transfers and parallel path flows throughout
the network must be addressed from a reliability viewpoint.

3. ATC calculations must recognize the dependency of ATC on the

points of electric power injection, the directions of transfers across
the interconnected transmission network, and the points of power
extraction. All entities must provide sufficient information necessary
for the calculation of ATC.

4. Regional or wide-area coordination is necessary to develop and post

information that reasonably reflects the ATCs of the interconnected
transmission network.
 Total transfer Capability (TTC)
✔ TTC is the largest flow through selected interfaces or corridors of
the transmission network which causes no thermal overloads,
voltage limit violations, voltage collapse or any other system
problems such as transient stability.

✔ Total transfer Capability (TTC) is the basic measure for evaluating

Available transfer capability (ATC).

✔ The calculation of TTC needs to take into account the system

conditions such as load forecast, generation dispatch, transmission
system configuration and scheduled transfers.
✔ Critical contingencies are also incorporated in the TTC calculations.

✔ The TTC for an interconnected system should consider thermal,

voltage and stability limits.

✔ Although TRM and CBM are important parts of ATC, they can be
considered independent from TTC evaluation.
 Transmission Reliability Margin (TRM)

✔ Transmission Reliability Margin (TRM) is defined as that amount

of transmission transfer capability necessary to ensure that the
interconnected transmission network is secure under a reasonable
range of uncertainties in system conditions.

✔ TRM is the reserved capacity to account for the uncertainties of

network conditions as well as calculation error.

✔ It is desirable to properly quantify the uncertainty in the ATC

calculation as a safety margin so that the power system will
remain secure despite the uncertainties, such as generator/
transmission line outages, load deviation and line impedance
changes.
✓ TRM accounts for the uncertainty in operating conditions such as
those in model parameters (e.g., line impedance) or load
forecasting errors.

✓ TRM would be time dependant in evaluating ATC, representing a

larger uncertainty for longer terms of the ATC evaluation.

✓ Components that should be considered in calculating TRM are:

⚫ Aggregate load forecasting error
⚫ Load distribution error
⚫ Variations in facility loadings for balancing load and generation
within a control area
⚫ Uncertainties in forecasting the system topology
⚫ Allowances fro parallel path )loop flow) impacts
 ⚫ Allowances for simultaneous path interactions
⚫ Variations in generation dispatch due to component outage
⚫ Variations in short-term operator response/operating reserve.

✓ The calculated values of these terms may change based on the

human experience and means of forecasting the system
conditions.
 Capacity Benefit Margin (CBM)
✔ To calculate the ATC between two areas in an interconnected
power system, capacity benefit margin (CBM) is one of the
indexes that need to be assessed.

✔ The amount of transmission transfer capability reserved by load

serving entities to ensure access to generation from
interconnected systems to meet generation reliability
requirements.

✔ CBM ensures security of system operation when the system faces

generation deficiency in some areas.
 Existing Transmission Commitments
(ETC)

Committed uses of the transmission system including

✔ Native Load commitments (including Network Integrated
Transmission Service),
✔ Ancillary Services not otherwise included in CBM or TRM,
✔ rollover rights,
✔ grandfathered transmission service agreements and bundled
contracts for energy and transmission,
✔ confirmed reservations,
✔ post-backs of redirected services, parallel flows, and counter
flows not otherwise accounted for in the ATC calculation
 Limits to Transfer Capability
▪ The ability of interconnected transmission networks to reliably
transfer electric power may be limited by the physical and
electrical characteristics of the systems including any one or more
of the following:

▪ Thermal Limits — Thermal limits establish the maximum amount

of electrical current that a transmission line or electrical facility can
conduct over a specified time period before it sustains permanent
damage by overheating or before it violates public safety
requirements.

▪ Voltage Limits — System voltages and changes in voltages must

be maintained within the range of acceptable minimum and
maximum limits. For example, minimum voltage limits can
establish the maximum amount of electric power that can be
transferred without causing damage to the electric system or
customer facilities. A widespread collapse of system voltage can
result in a blackout of portions or the entire interconnected
network.
✔ Stability Limits — the transmission network must be capable of surviving
disturbances through the transient and dynamic time periods (from
Milliseconds to several minutes, respectively) following the disturbance. All
generators connected to ac interconnected transmission systems operate
in synchronism with each other at the same frequency (nominally 60
Hertz).
✔ Immediately following a system disturbance, generators begin to oscillate
relative to each other, causing fluctuations in system frequency, line
loadings, and system voltages. For the system to be stable, the oscillations
must diminish as the electric systems attain a new, stable operating point.
✔ If a new, stable operating point is not quickly established, the generators
will likely lose synchronism with one another, and all or a portion of the
interconnected electric systems may become unstable. The results of
generator instability may damage equipment and cause uncontrolled,
widespread interruption of electric supply to customers.
✔ The limiting condition on some portions of the transmission network can
shift among thermal, voltage, and stability limits as the network operating
conditions change over time. Such variations further complicate the
determination of transfer capability limits.
 ATC Calculation
⚫ Mathematically, the ATC value between two points is given as:

⚫ ATC = TTC –TRM- ( ETC+CBM)

where,
ATC Available Transfer Capability
TTC Total Transfer Capability
TRM Transmission Reliability Margin
CBM Capacity Benefit Margin.
ETC Existing Transmission Commitments including retail
customer services between the same two points.
TTC is
Min {Thermal Limit, Voltage Limit, Stability Limit}
 TTC Calculation
To calculate a point-to-point TTC, i.e.,
between a source bus and a sink bus, a
possible framework for TTC calculation is
devised as follows:

1. Starting from the current operating point of the base

case, the load on the sink bus would gradually be
increased, and the corresponding load flow would be
calculated while the source bus acts as swing
(reference) bus. If any of thermal, voltage or stability
constraints is reached, the corresponding power
transfer from the source to the sink becomes the TTC
candidate.
2. From the prepared contingency list, represent one contingency in
the system and the resulting load flow. Starting from this flow
solution (similar to step1), we would increase the load on the sink
bus while the source bus acts as a swing bus until system
constraints are reached, and the corresponding power from the
source to the sink would become a new TTC candidate. All of the
contingencies in the list would be handled through this step.

3. The final TTC for the source-sink pair, at the base operation point,
is the minimum TTC of all TTC candidates.
 TRM Calculation

✓ There are several proposed approaches to calculate TRM. The first

one is the Monte Carlo Statistical approach, which is based on the
repeated computation of TTC using variations in the base case
data.

✓ The second approach is a single computation of TTC using

limitations reduced by a fixed percentage to calculate TRM.

✓ The last approach is a probabilistic approach based on statistical

forecasting error and other systematic reliability concepts.

✓ The second approaches would result in a lower ATC value.

✓ Each TP would set the TRM in accordance with its own security
criterion.
 CBM Calculation

✓ CBM is the translation of generator reserve margin into a transfer

capability quantity, determined by (or for) Load serving entities
(LSE) within a host TP. It is the responsibility of TP to determine
the needed quantity of CBM by considering the requirements of
all TCs entitled to a portion of CBM.

✓ Preservation of CBM for a LSE allows that entity to reduce its

installed generating capacity below what may otherwise have
been necessary without interconnections to meet its generation
reliability requirements. The transmission capacity preserved as
CBM is intended to be used by LSE only in times of emergency
generation deficiencies.
 Methods/Techniques

⚫
⚫
Evolutionary programming (EP)

⚫
Genetic algorithm (GA)

⚫
Artificial Neural Network (ANN)

⚫
Fuzzy logic

⚫
Continuation Power Flow (CPF)

⚫
Differential Evolution (DE)

⚫
Monte Carlo simulation
Probabilistic Composite System Evaluation
program (PROCOSE)
⚫ Improved Artificial Fish Swarm Algorithm

⚫
(IAFSA)
Particle swarm optimization (PSO)