A heuristic-based approach for reliability importance assessment of energy producers

Reliability of energy supply is one of the most important issues of service quality. On one hand, customers usually have different expectations for service reliability and price. On the other hand, providing different level of reliability at load points is a challenge for system operators. In order to take reasonable decisions and obviate reliability implementation difficulties, market players need to know impacts of their assets on system and load-point reliabilities. One tool to specify reliability impacts of assets is the criticality or reliability importance measure by which system components can be ranked based on their effect on reliability. Conventional methods for determination of reliability importance are essentially on the basis of risk sensitivity analysis and hence, impose prohibitive calculation burden in large power systems. An approach is proposed in this paper to determine reliability importance of energy producers from perspective of consumers or distribution companies in a composite generation and transmission system. In the presented method, while avoiding immense computational burden, the energy producers are ranked based on their rating, unavailability and impact on power flows in the lines connecting to the considered load points. Study results on the IEEE reliability test system show successful application of the proposed method. ► Required reliability level at load points is a concern in modern power systems. ► It is important to assess reliability importance of energy producers or generators. ► Generators can be ranked based on their impacts on power flow to a selected area. ► Ranking of generators is an efficient tool to assess their reliability importance.