Integration of new generation and load technology in the computation of risk over the operations planning time-horizon

As new load and generation technologies accompanied by inherent uncertainties are integrated into power systems, utilities should plan to revise their balancing reserves in order to mitigate the consequences of forecast errors. One such technology is wind power generation. To this end, Hydro-Québec has put forward a novel methodology calculating the level of these balancing reserves, over the time horizon of 1–48 hours, based on the risk that the load will exceed the committed generation capacity. The methodology reported in this paper requires as input the statistical characteristics of the load and wind generation forecast errors and of the generation outages, but it is general enough to accommodate other technologies displaying forecast uncertainties The implementation details of this methodology as well a discussion of the nature of the results are given.