Coordination of large scale power systems

Summary form only as given. In both the United States and Europe, large electric utilities are interconnected with each other. In the past, ad hoc methods have been used to coordinate operations on wide scales. However, with increasing trades, there is a pressing need for paradigms that allow commercial activity to be roughly consistent with Kirchhoff's laws and to rationally coordinate the operation of large-scale networks, while allowing for continued decentralized control of the system. The author discusses issues related to large-scale coordination, particularly the need to align commercial paradigms at least roughly with Kirchhoff's laws