Grant: Discovery Grants Program - Individual

Reliable electricity supply is an important requirement in a modern society and reliability assessment is therefore an important function in the planning, design and operation of electric power systems. Reliability assessment provides important input to the investment decisions associated with providing customers with a reasonable level of reliability at an acceptable cost. The general and long term objectives of the proposed program are to conduct research to further enhance the available techniques, and develop new techniques, to conduct reliability assessment in planning and operating electric power systems. The changing electric power utility environment has created considerable uncertainty in long-range planning and system operation. These changes include the unbundling and re-regulation of traditional utility structures and the need to evaluate and incorporate renewable energy sources in the provision of reliable supply. Unbundling and re-regulation has resulted in the creation of new entities, such as independent system operators and transmission operators, with new functions and responsibilities that require new reliability assessment tools and protocols. One of the most exciting challenges in the immediate future will be to actually integrate renewable energy sources into the planning and operation of electric power systems rather than simply add them in response to the need for ""clean"" electrical energy. Renewable electric energy sources are important and valuable resources that require new models and techniques to facilitate their optimum utilization in an electric power system. This is an exciting area of research with important societal implications. The specific objectives of this research program are the development of concepts and techniques to evaluate the reliability of generation, transmission and distribution systems incorporating renewable energy facilities. Considerable work has been done on methods to incorporate wind and solar energy facilities in generating capacity reliability evaluation. Further work is required, however, to assess the reliability and economic implications associated with increased penetration of wind power in electric power systems consisting of more conventional generation.