Ex-ante transmission-service pricing based on load-flow patterns

In this paper, a new pattern-based transmission-service pricing technique is reported. It is based on power-flow tracing techniques that determine the power contributions of participants in line power flows throughout the whole network. Since producers supply a consumer through the transmission paths considering Kirchoff´s Laws, it is obvious that the actual paths are not strongly correlated with the contractual paths. This means that instead of financial paths, only the actual power-flow paths should be considered when calculating the transmission-service price. Power-flow data from previous years can be utilized for this purpose. Several power systems and different operating states that realistically represent actual system operating conditions were statistically analyzed. The analysis showed a constant pattern of power-flow shares in lines to consumers, which can be utilized in ex-ante transmission pricing for a network. Since the new approach reflects the characteristics of transaction- and nontransaction-based methods, it combines their benefits too.