Assessment of pumped storage plant benefits in fuel budgeting and operational planning

Storage in power systems can have several roles and can affect system costs in many ways. Probabilistic production costing calculations based on load duration curve techniques only take into account the cost benefits of artificial energy exchange (AEE) by pumped storage power plants. The authors present a methodology to calculate the cost benefits of pumped storage plants to provide for AEE and reduced start-up and shut-down costs of thermal power plants in probabilistic production costing. Results of a sample study are also shown. The technique is based on an equivalent load duration curve, which is used to calculate the expected operating costs of the system. An equivalent load transition frequency function is added to calculate the expected start-up costs of the system