Reliability and economic analysis of different power station layouts

The liberalization of electric power systems puts a strong pressure on the issues concerned with the reliability of power stations. In the vertically integrated system there was no explicit penalization in case of unexpected outages of generators. In a market scenario, where power stations are held by different generating companies, outages are more critical and may have significant economic consequences. Moreover, long unavailability periods (as in the case of severe failures of the main transformer) may affect the rate of return of investments related with power stations. This work is based on a simulation of the behaviour of two Italian power stations carried out with the help of the Monte Carlo method. The analysis provides important insights in the optimization of power station layouts, evaluating the possible introduction of generator circuit breakers in existing schemes, as well as the possibility of applying different power station topologies. An economic evaluation of the different power station layouts is also provided, taking into account different scenarios in terms of energy selling price.