An enhanced method for the determination of load following reserves

Power generation reserves play a central role for maintaining the balance of generation and consumption. Reserves, scheduled in advance, compensate for forecast error, variability and transmission losses. However, as reserves are a costly commodity, their amount should be carefully assessed to prevent unnecessary expense. Currently, the quantity of required reserves are determined based upon a posteriori methods that use operator´s experience and established assumptions. This paper instead presents a method founded upon non-dimensional numbers and digitial signal processing to determine the quantity of load following reserves a priori.