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ECONOMIC OPEARATION OF POWER SYSTEM

5.1 INTRODUCTION

One of the earliest applications of on-line centralized control was to provide a central
facility, to operate economically, several generating plants supplying the loads of the
system. Modern integrated systems have different types of generating plants, such as coal
fired thermal plants, hydel plants, nuclear plants, oil and natural gas units etc. The capital
investment, operation and maintenance costs are different for different types of plants. The
operation economics can again be subdivided into two parts.
i) Problem of economic dispatch, which deals with determining the power output of each
plant to meet the specified load, such that the overall fuel cost is minimized.
ii) Problem of optimal power flow, which deals with minimum – loss delivery, where in
the power flow, is optimized to minimize losses in the system. In this chapter we consider
the problem of economic dispatch.
During operation of the plant, a generator may be in one of the following states:
i) Base supply without regulation: the output is a constant.
ii) Base supply with regulation: output power is regulated based on system load.
iii) Automatic non-economic regulation: output level changes around a base setting as area
control error changes.
iv) Automatic economic regulation: output level is adjusted, with the area load and area
control error, while tracking an economic setting.

Regardless of the units operating state, it has a contribution to the economic operation,
even though its output is changed for different reasons. The factors influencing the cost of
generation are the generator efficiency, fuel cost and transmission losses. The most
efficient generator may not give minimum cost, since it may be located in a place where
fuel cost is high. Further, if the plant is located far from the load centers, transmission
losses may be high and running the plant may become uneconomical. The economic
dispatch problem basically determines the generation of different plants to minimize total
operating cost.

Modern generating plants like nuclear plants, geo-thermal plants etc, may require capital
investment of millions of rupees. The economic dispatch is however determined in terms
of fuel cost per unit power generated and does not include capital investment,
maintenance, depreciation, start-up and shut down costs etc.

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5.2 PERFORMANCE CURVES

INPUT-OUTPUT CURVE

This is the fundamental curve for a thermal plant and is a plot of the input in British
thermal units (Btu) per hour versus the power output of the plant in MW as shown in Fig1.

HEAT RATE CURVE

The heat rate is the ratio of fuel input in Btu to energy output in KWh. It is the slope of the
input – output curve at any point. The reciprocal of heat – rate is called fuel –efficiency.
The heat rate curve is a plot of heat rate versus output in MW. A typical plot is shown in
Fig .2

Fig .2 Heat rate curve.

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INCREMENTAL FUEL RATE CURVE

The incremental fuel rate is equal to a small change in input divided by the
corresponding change in output.

The unit is again Btu / KWh. A plot of incremental fuel rate versus the output is shown in
Fig 3

Incremental cost curve

The incremental cost is the product of incremental fuel rate and fuel cost (Rs / Btu or $ /
Btu). The curve in shown in Fig. 4. The unit of the incremental fuel cost is Rs / MWh or
$ /MWh.

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In general, the fuel cost Fi for a plant, is approximated as a quadratic function of the
generated output PGi.

The incremental fuel cost is given by

The incremental fuel cost is a measure of how costly it will be produce an increment of
power. The incremental production cost, is made up of incremental fuel cost plus the
incremental cost of labour, water, maintenance etc. which can be taken to be some
percentage of the incremental fuel cost, instead of resorting to a rigorous mathematical
model. The cost curve can be approximated by a linear curve. While there is negligible
operating cost for a hydel plant, there is a limitation on the power output possible. In any
plant, all units normally operate between PGmin, the minimum loading limit, below which
it is technically infeasible to operate a unit and PGmax, which is the maximum output
limit.

5.3 ECONOMIC GENERATION SCHEDULING NEGLECTING LOSSES AND

GENERATOR LIMITS

The simplest case of economic dispatch is the case when transmission losses are
neglected. The model does not consider the system configuration or line impedances.
Since losses are neglected, the total generation is equal to the total demand PD. Consider a
system with ng number of generating plants supplying the total demand PD. If Fi is the

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cost of plant i in Rs/h, the mathematical formulation of the problem of economic

scheduling can be stated as follows:

This is a constrained optimization problem, which can be solved by Lagrange‟s method.

LAGRANGE METHOD FOR SOLUTION OF ECONOMIC SCHEDULE

The problem is restated below:

The second equation is simply the original constraint of the problem. The cost of a plant

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Fi depends only on its own output PGi, hence

The above equation is called the co-ordination equation. Simply stated, for economic
generation scheduling to meet a particular load demand, when transmission losses are
neglected and generation limits are not imposed, all plants must operate at equal
incremental production costs, subject to the constraint that the total generation be equal to
the demand. From we have

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It can be seen that l is dependent on the demand and the coefficients of the cost function.

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Example 1.

The fuel costs of two units are given by

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5.4 ECONOMIC SCHEDULE INCLUDING LIMITS ON GENERATOR

(NEGLECTING LOSSES)
The power output of any generator has a maximum value dependent on the rating of the
generator. It also has a minimum limit set by stable boiler operation. The economic
dispatch problem now is to schedule generation to minimize cost, subject to the equality
constraint.

The procedure followed is same as before i.e. the plants are operated with equal
incremental fuel costs, till their limits are not violated. As soon as a plant reaches the limit
(maximum or minimum) its output is fixed at that point and is maintained a constant. The
other plants are operated at equal incremental costs.
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Example 3

Incremental fuel costs in $ / MWh for two units are given below:

Now at light loads unit 1 has a higher incremental cost and hence will operate at its lower
limit of 20 MW. Initially, additional load is taken up by unit 2, till such time its
incremental fuel cost becomes equal to 2.2$ / MWh at PG2 = 50 MW. Beyond this, the
two units are operated with equal incremental fuel costs. The contribution of each unit to
meet the demand is obtained by assuming different values of l; When l = 3.1 $ / MWh,
unit 2 operates at its upper limit. Further loads are taken up by unit 1. The computations
are show in Table

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For a particular value of l, PG1 and PG2 are calculated using (8.16). Fig 8.5 Shows plot of
each unit output versus the total plant output.

For any particular load, the schedule for each unit for economic dispatch can be obtained.
Example 4.

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In example 3, what is the saving in fuel cost for the economic schedule compared to the
case where the load is shared equally. The load is 180 MW.
Solution:
From Table it is seen that for a load of 180 MW, the economic schedule is PG1 = 80 MW
and PG2 = 100 MW. When load is shared equally PG1 = PG2 = 90 MW. Hence, the
generation of unit 1 increases from 80 MW to 90 MW and that of unit 2 decreases from
100 MW to 90 MW, when the load is shared equally. There is an increase in cost of unit 1
since PG1 increases and decrease in cost of unit 2 since PG2 decreases.

5.5 ECONOMIC DISPATCH INCLUDING TRANSMISSION LOSSES

When transmission distances are large, the transmission losses are a significant part of the
generation and have to be considered in the generation schedule for economic operation.
The mathematical formulation is now stated as

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The minimum operation cost is obtained when the product of the incremental fuel cost and
the penalty factor of all units is the same, when losses are considered. A rigorous general
expression for the loss PL is given by

where Bmn, Bno , Boo called loss – coefficients , depend on the load composition. The
assumption here is that the load varies linearly between maximum and minimum values. A
simpler expression is

The expression assumes that all load currents vary together as a constant complex fraction
of the total load current. Experiences with large systems has shown that the loss of
accuracy is not significant if this approximation is used. An average set of loss coefficients
may be used over the complete daily cycle in the coordination of incremental production
costs and incremental transmission losses. In general, Bmn = Bnm and can be expanded
for a two plant system as

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Example 5
A generator is supplying a load. An incremental change in load of 4 MW requires
generation to be increased by 6 MW. The incremental cost at the plant bus is Rs 30 /MWh.
What is the incremental cost at the receiving end?

Solution:

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5.6 DERIVATION OF TRANSMISSION LOSS FORMULA

An accurate method of obtaining general loss coefficients has been presented by Kron.
The method is elaborate and a simpler approach is possible by making the following
assumptions:
(i) All load currents have same phase angle with respect to a common reference
(ii) The ratio X / R is the same for all the network branches.
Consider the simple case of two generating plants connected to an arbitrary number of
loads through a transmission network as shown in Fig a

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UNIT-5&6

1. Derive the necessary condition for optimal operation of thermal

power plants with the transmission losses considered.

2. What are B- coefficients? Derive the matrix form of transmission loss

equation.

3. Explain the method of equal incremental cost for the economic

operation of generators with transmission loss considered.

4. Explain problem formation and solution procedure of optimal

scheduling for hydro thermal plants.

5. What is the basic criterion for economical division of load between

units within a plant?

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