Outage evaluation integrated with multi-time network study in energy management systems

Outage management is a critical task for power system operations. Modern energy management systems usually support such a function by means of the outage scheduler application. Outage scheduler helps to manage the system outage scheduling information however lacks providing quantitative analysis for operators to evaluate outage requests. This paper presents a new solution for processing outages that require evaluation for approvals. Different from outage scheduler, the proposed solution assesses the impact of requested outages for multiple specified time points via a sequence of network studies including economic dispatch, contingency analysis and security enhancement. The analysis results help operators make the decision in approving or disapproving requested outages. To test the effectiveness of the outage evaluation method, a computer model based simulation on the Florida Power & Light system is conducted considering use of expected loads, generation, area interchange under given operating condition and contingency definitions.