Exploring profit earning strategies used by DISCOMs under frequency linked tariff followed in India

Frequency linked commercial tariff system commonly known as Availability Based Tariff (ABT) is adopted as self-regulatory market signal by Central Electricity Regulatory Commission (CERC) in India to maintain grid frequency by minimizing the deviations between real power demand and generation. This is achieved by paying a higher price to Generating Company (GENCO) for increasing generation from scheduled and paying incentive to Distribution Company (DISCOM) for reducing drawl from scheduled for the time blocks when frequency is below the specified frequency. In the same way the beneficiary utilities or generating utilities may be in loss for over drawl/under injection respectively as the penalty depends upon the system frequency. This paper explores the profit earning strategies used by distribution companies (DISCOMs) under ABT mechanism followed in India. The fuzzy logic based mode; for drawl scheduling developed here is compared with actual values using statistical t-test. The results obtained show the authenticity of proposed scheduling model. The work also draws the attention to the fact that DISCOMs are earning profit during few time blocks of the day by giving over scheduling to the dispatch center intentionally. Paired t-test is applied on the actual drawl and scheduled drawl of a distribution company Delhi region to establish our findings.