Active/reactive bid based dispatch models to be used in electricity markets

This paper describes two new active/reactive dispatch models to be used by System Operators in order to assign reactive power and to validate the economic schedules prepared by Market Operators together with the injections related with Bilateral Contracts. When talking about electricity markets one usually refers to active power markets paying less attention to ancillary services, namely to reactive power/voltage control. This usually leads to a chronological sequence of activities that may lead to inefficiencies because active and reactive powers are coupled given the capability diagram of synchronous generators, the ac power flow equations and the branch thermal limits. In this paper, we propose new models to remarry active and reactive allocation procedures based on a market approach as a way to ensure operation transparency. The resulting optimization problems are solved by a Sequential Linear Programming, SLP, approach that allows one to compute active and reactive nodal marginal prices at its final iteration. The paper includes a case study based on the IEEE 24 Bus Test System to illustrate the application of the developed models and demonstrate their interest in the scope of restructured power systems. © 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.