A comprehensive approach for transfer capability calculation using benders decomposition

Available transfer capability (ATC) is an important concept and plays an increasingly significant role in competitive electricity markets. In this paper, a method of the multi-level contingency screening and ranking is first presented to select the severe contingencies. Second, benders decomposition technique is applied to decompose the problem of ATC calculation considering static security constraints into an iterative two-stage mathematic programming problem. At the first stage, the master problem is formulated for the calculation of ATC with the non- contingency security constraints and benders cuts relevant to the violated contingencies. At the second stage, a set of slave problems are formulated to check the feasibility of the solved ATC for various contingencies. Two schemes are presented to add benders cuts to the master problem. The two-stage optimization problem is solved by using the sequential quadratic programming technique in a master-slave iteration manner until no violation occurs for each contingency. Finally, the solution procedure and interface of ATC calculation is given with the numerical results on the IEEE 30-bus system.