Market and system efficiency considerations in Smart Grid operation

Security and economy are long standing underpinnings for power system operation. The evolution from regulated utility operation to competitive markets operation led to more formalized treatment of economy and security concerns through the deployment of market clearing applications that are based mathematical programming methods. Among the most common market clearing applications are security-constrained unit commitment (SCUC) for day-ahead scheduling, and security-constrained economic dispatch (SCED) for real-time dispatch. Compared with previous generations of experience and/or heuristic based approaches, the use of formal optimization technology allows for greater transparency and consistency in the scheduling and dispatch processes. By extension, the market clearing application engines can be adapted to after-the-fact studies for assessing past performance. Such an approach is used by PJM in its successful implementation of the Perfect Dispatch (PD) functions.