Security assessment of the results of the day-ahead electricity market, using a Monte Carlo power system simulator

Many variables are involved in the power system’s reliability assessment, often affected by random events, such as load levels, wind speed and accidental failures of generating units or transmission lines. Furthermore, the presence of a competitive market, which schedules the hourly working point of the electric system, has to be considered and an effective calculation of the reliability level associated to the dispatching schedule defined by the market must be operated by the System Operator (SO) before the actual energy delivery. For this kind of problems, a probabilistic approach, based on sequential Monte Carlo techniques, can be more powerful than analytical methods. In the present paper, a simulation tool for calibrating the amount of generation reserve for the following day is described and analyzed, also discussing the results of a case study based on the IEEE RTS-96 test grid.