Ancillary Services in North America: An Overview

The main purpose of electric power system is to transfer the energy from generation level to load. For smooth reliable operation of this system, ancillary services (AS) have crucial contribution. This paper conducts a review of ancillary services provision in North American Electric Power System (NAEPS) based on North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC) and Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) guidelines. A detailed description of each service is reviewed based on latest updates of regulations. The second part of the paper presents analysis of historical variation of AS costs in five markets in NAEPS as well as the New Brunswick (NB) market pricing based on proxy unit.