Track:
Future Electric Power Systems: Smart Grids, Engineering,
Economics
and Security
Minitrack:
Engineering and Economics Interactions
Electric Power
System Monitoring and Control
The objective of this minitrack is
to present research on how different market structures and
incentives, as well as regulatory requirements, rewards and
penalties, affect the operating reliability of electricity supply
and the financial viability of the participants in electricity
markets. These issues will become increasingly important as the
nation adopts new energy policies and a transition to a low-carbon
economy. Greater reliance on renewable sources of energy, such as
wind and solar power, new technologies, such as electric vehicles
and storage devices, and distributed resources, such as
controllable loads and smart appliances, will increase the
complexity of operating the grid. At the same time, these new
capabilities also provide the potential for improving reliability
by reducing the stress on the network and lowering costs if
portfolios of different technologies are managed in symbiotic
ways.
Session 1: Markets and Reliability
Session Organizer and Chair – Richard Tabors, RTabors@crai.com
Increases in cleaner/greener, often renewable and more
distributed technologies within the electric power system have
focused attention on the manner in which these technologies will
be integrated into existing market structures and their impact on
the continued reliability of the system. Papers within this
session will focus on the economic/engineering elements of
integrating increasingly smart, distributed technologies into what
is believed will be an increasingly smart grid.
Session 2: Distributed Energy Systems
Session Organizer and Chair: Richard Schuler, res1@cornell.edu
Recent technological, regulatory and market innovations move the
configuration of the future electricity system in opposite
directions. As an example, many wind-power advocates promote a
large 765Kv overlay to the nation’s transmission grid, while
others would couple wind with storage (like plug-in hybrid
vehicles) through smart meters and real-time pricing that might
lead to a more decentralized result. This tension between
centralizing, large-scale solutions and decentralized small-scale
innovations has existed throughout the electric industry’s
history, and it continues on today among proponents of micro-grids
and distributed generation, and advocates of large new nuclear,
wind-farm and solar facilities tied to distant markets through a
greatly strengthened transmission system. One challenge is to
establish a “smart” network of shared real-time information flows
that is available to all interested parties - - buyers, sellers
and operators - - so that technological innovations are not
diverted by institutional biases. It is anticipated that papers
would discuss necessary institutional and market structures that
may result in differing configurations of the electricity supply
system. They might also analyze how various distributed
configurations might affect the operation, control and economics
of the existing larger-scale system, and describe how they might
be integrated into that larger network without degradation. How
and when might distributed systems enhance or diminish the
reliability, and security, of the power grid, and what are the
economic tradeoffs? What behavioral phenomena are involved?
Minitrack Chair:
Tim Mount
Dept. of Applied Economics and Management
Cornell University
215 Warren Hall
Ithaca, NY 14853
Phone: 607-255-4512
Fax: 607-255-9984
Email: tdm2@cornell.edu
