A study on pancaking problem in Japanese power market

In Japan, the revised electric power law was approved in June 2003. In the process of the debate on the law, one of the main issues was elimination of the pancaking problem. In this paper, a new approach is proposed for the problem. In the approach, the power flow calculations are carried out, and from the result of the power flow calculations the pancaking problem is considered from physical and economic viewpoints. As a physical point of view, we use a power flow tracing method. Then we propose a new tracing method, which improves disadvantages of the conventional methods. As an economic point of view, we calculate the payments in the existing system, the revised system, the CBT (cross border trade) mechanism, and the improved CBT mechanism, respectively. A comparison and considerations are made for the payment systems.