A New Approach to Electric Power System Planning — Explicit Consideration of System Uncertainty

Abstract

A new method for electric power system planning is proposed, which deals with uncertainties of various system parameters such as fuel and facility costs as a part of the criterion function. Namely the criterion function is chosen as the sum of the average system cost squared and its weighted variance. The key idea lies in the way of determining variances of cost parameters of different power plants. The authors propose first to evaluate these variances from the data of existing plans and then to modify them in an orderly way for the planning of future power systems. The first process is no other than a so-called inverse optimization process whereas the second one is the ordinary optimization. The results of applying this method to the planning of Japanese electric power system demonstrate usefulness of the method.