The role of less-economic generating units in the open access transmission era

The paper describes how a small 50 MW combustion turbine peaking generating plant can make a dramatic improvement if its location is internally within a 2500 MW load area in a generation deficient system that has the potential for voltage collapse. In the era of open access transmission, the power market will always tend to import less expensive power, and load up the transmission system rather than support the generation of less-economic local power. This will use up available reactive power and will inevitably result in lower voltages. In an identified low voltage scenario, when an N-2 outage could cause a serious reliability situation that may threaten the region, reserve or peaking "less economic" generation located internal to a load area has a vital part to play regardless of economics.