Operational reliability: objective or constraint?

Summary form only given. This article discusses the following questions related to power system reliability: What is reliability? Who is responsible for the various aspects of reliability? Who is responsible for what time frames? What about economics? As long as locational marginal price (LMP) or some other well understood system parameter can be utilized as a proxy for the reliability level that a given customer is willing to pay for, then the process can be managed in real time. This assumes that security constrained economic dispatch (SCED) or other automated tools can be made available to the system operators and that these tools reflect the system operators perception of reliability risk on the system. Without such automated tools, it will be difficult, if not impossible, to manage this process.