Towards more transmission asset utilization through real-time path rating

Ratings of transmission paths, typically determined in an offline environment, are static and conservative, leading to underutilization of transmission assets, higher costs of system operation and renewable energy integration, and lower efficiency. With the ever-increasing transmission congestion costs and new challenges from renewable integration, increasing the transfer capability of existing transmission lines is essential. Real-time path rating provides a promising approach to enabling additional power transfer capability and fully utilizing transmission assets. In this paper, the feasibility of real-time path rating is investigated, by introducing several promising computational technologies to achieve such a capability. Various benefits expected from real-time path rating, such as increased transfer capability and reduced total generation cost, are demonstrated through simulations conducted on the Western Electricity Coordinating Council (WECC) system model.