Load & Frequency Control in Competitive Power Systems

The introduction of competitive mechanisms in electric power systems has supposed the restructuring of the generation market and the assignment of the different ancillary services through competitive procedures. The hourly energy schedules resulting from daily markets can be satisfied by the generation units using different power programs subject to their technical constraints, usually leading to very inefficient programs and forcing an intensive use of generation reserves and regulation energy in the AGC real-time procedure. The objective of this paper is to propose new regulation structures and mechanisms in order to improve the secondary reserve energy management for electric systems opened to competition in generation, taking into account their peculiarities, specially in the Spanish case.