A Comprehensive Short-Term Operations Framework for a Disco in Competitive Electricity Markets

A comprehensive operational planning model for a disco operating in a competitive environment is presented in this paper. The operational planning function is a two-level model in which the first level deals with the disco's activities in the day- ahead stage. In the second level, the model deals with the disco's activities in the real-time stage. The first level model determines the disco's operational decisions with regard to its grid purchase, scheduling of any distributed generation (DG) sources owned by it, or purchase scheduling of investor-owned DG, contracting for interruptible loads. These decisions are imposed as binding constraints in the real-time model and the disco seeks to minimize its short-term costs keeping in mind its day-ahead decisions. A case-study is carried out considering the well-known 33-bus distribution system.