Fast acting load control

As open access market principles are applied to power systems, stability margins have been steadily decreasing. This has lead to events such as rolling black-outs in several power systems, for example, California, and has generally resulted in increased electricity prices. A novel approach to reduce the tension in electrical systems is to establish a fast acting load control program for price and system stability. This differs from traditional approaches where additional transmission lines and generators need to be installed. Using this approach, load can be modeled and controlled similar to a generator, proving spinning reserve. The paper reviews existing implementations of fast acting load control. Furthermore, in this paper, two Lagrangian based approaches are used to determine optimal locations for fast acting load control. The approaches are formulated to consider economic cost and stability limits. The effects of applying these approaches are analyzed using a 30-bus system, which is derived from the IEEE 30-bus test system.