Electric power systems operation by decision and control. The case revisited

We have witnessed sweeping changes in the organization of the electric power industry. This has had a profound effect on the industry's system operations and planning rules and has created a need to revisit its modeling, decision-making, and control principles. Historically, the decision and control of large-scale electric power systems has developed as the system interconnection has grown. The article begins by assessing principles of operation by decision and control for today's fully regulated industry. Following this summary, several major ongoing changes are interpreted from a systems point of view. It turns out that major challenges-economic, policy, and technical-are inherently systems problems. To illustrate this claim, new decision-making problems essential to having a successful generation business in a competitive industry are defined. This section is very detailed and describes the challenge created by introducing profit-based and risk management issues in the context of under the highly uncertain, often volatile, market price of electricity. Following that, the modified objectives of and decision making by future power delivery companies are described. The discussion shows how these regulatory issues directly impact the hierarchies and complexity of the related dynamic systems problem. Moreover, the so-called load serving entities or energy service providers will be critical to the technologies potentially useful to specific customers.