An Improved Load shedding technique for optimal location and profitability for contingency conditions

South Africa is one of the fastest developing countries in the Africa. With every development there is normally an increase in load (energy consumption). Under normal conditions, to avoid high frequency deviations that could lead to power outage if not addressed, demand and generation (supply) should be at parity i.e. equal. In the last decade, the country has been under threat of supply shortage due to the maximum electrical demand encroaching on the net maximum capacity and the reserve margin being depleted. One of the biggest problems that is being faced by South Africa and other developing countries is load shedding and power cuts. The need for load shedding generally arises from unforeseen causes. Should there be a need for load shedding reliable techniques should be in place to act fast to prevent collapse in the power system. Load shedding schemes have been implemented as an emergency measure to prevent total blackouts on the entire supply system. As much as load shedding schemes are a temporary measure, there is a need to optimise their implementation to minimise a disastrous impact on the country's economy until additional power reserves are introduced in the network. This paper presents an approach which embeds the penalty cost of each consumer attached to each bus to determine the optimum location to be shed, thereby maintaining the customer satisfaction. Linear programming is applied to minimise the amount of load to be shed.