Optimal generation investment planning: Pt. 2: Application to the ERCOT system

Power system planning and market behavioral analysis using the full model of a large-scale network, such as the entire ERCOT system, are computationally expensive. Reducing the full network into a small equivalent is a practical way to reduce the computational burden. In a companion paper, a modified-Ward equivalencing procedure has been proposed. In this paper, the proposed scheme is applied to the ERCOT system to obtain several backbone equivalents, the accuracy of which are tested under a range of operating conditions. The ERCOT equivalent is used in a system planning tool to perform optimal generation investment studies with promising results observed.