A Framework for Transfer Capability Analysis in Power Systems: An Automated Approach

With the increasing demand for electricity and the rapid changes in their energy resources portfolio, utilities need to protect the reliability of their systems. This need for reliability and resource adequacy is the foundation of the Integrated Resources Plan (IRP) required by many states. A component of the plan includes the study of a system’s ability to transfer power over the transmission network through import and/or export. Utilities commonly study this by manually simulating large sets of contingencies—an exhaustive and multi-step process. Dominion Energy has developed an automation toolset that leverages pyPowerGEM and Python to create simulations and tune generation dispatch, while maintaining N-1 security. Results for various use cases showed that the transfer capability automation tool, the first component of the toolset, dramatically reduced the time to calculate transfer capability—by up to 90%. Moreover, the transfer capability enhancement tool, the second component of the toolset, improved the transfer capability through generation re-dispatching, which provided engineers with a better understanding of the transmission network constraints and how they can affect access to needed electricity. The tool’s graphical user interface (GUI) allows access to a large range of users interested in understanding both import and export transfer capability limits. While this automation tool was built and tested for Dominion Energy, the general outline of the tool provided in this paper can be adopted by other utilities and adapted to their systems.