Grant: Strategic Projects - Group

Society's demand for electricity continues to grow, yet environmental, regulatory and economic constraints often preclude the construction of new power plants and transmission lines. The challenge now faced by engineers, equipment manufacturers, and regulatory agencies is to find ways to maximize the capacity of existing power lines, derived from the maximum allowable flow of power. The most important factor limiting this flow is thermal, as overloading of thermally limited circuits can result in physical failures. It is typically based on conservative weather assumptions to ensure that safety and reliability requirements are met. As a result, transmission lines are generally underutilized. At the same time, the risk of circuit failure is not completely eliminated, because the assumptions, while conservative, do not represent a true worst-case scenario. This project will develop a system for dynamic rating of transmission lines based on mesoscale Numerical Weather Prediction (NWP) models, that have recently become commonly available and that can be run with relatively modest computing resources. These models can provide much more detailed information than any observation or measurement network. Rating systems using outputs of such models will provide relevant meteorological parameters with a spatial resolution comparable to the spans of overhead lines themselves. Besides better utilization of existing transmission lines, the proposed system will provide a number of other benefits, such as: 1) Construction of new transmission circuits can be deferred or avoided based on the knowledge of true line ampacities; 2) Continuous monitoring and comparison of ratings and actual loads can be used for asset management and maintenance purposes; 3) Energy losses can be minimized by avoiding operation of lines close to their actual thermal limit; 4) Unused line capacity can be harnessed for new developments of alternative (e.g. wind power) generation assets ; 5) Electricity trading opportunities can be seized and unnecessary load shedding avoided.