Authors: J. Deluzio, R. Allen, T. Olason, S. G. Bridgeman
Abstract
Operations planning for the Great Lakes Power Ltd (GLP) power system has been carried out with the use of a comprehensive Decision Support System (DSS) since early 1995. The GLP system comprises twelve hydroelectric facilities on four river systems in Northern Ontario, with a total capacity of 300 MW, and supplies electricity in the Sault Ste. Marie area. GLP can meet approximately two thirds of the area demand, and imports the remaining power from Ontario Hydro, under an existing time-of-use rate structure for peak power and total energy consumption.
In the early 1990’s, GLP contracted Acres International Limited to develop optimum operating policies for both short and long-term operation of the system. Later, the optimization methods used to develop those policies were imbedded into a DSS to enable frequent updating of operations decisions, in order to react quickly and efficiently to changing conditions. Changing conditions include forecasted load demand, forecasted inflows, unit availability, tariff structures for both imports and exports, transaction opportunities, physical characteristics of facilities, and constraints on operations.
The DSS employs a database to store all historic and current data for the system, and a windows-style Graphical User Interface (GUl) to facilitate applications. The DSS comprises a module to guide long-term energy management (entitled System Control PLANing, or SCPLAN), and a separate but linked module to control short-term generation scheduling (entitled System Control GENeration Scheduling, or SCGEN).
This paper outlines a number of typical situations in which the various modules of the DSS were used to guide operations, encompassing both long- and short-term issues.
