TRANSMISSION PLANNING IN THE CHILEAN ELECTRICITY MARKET

摘要

Chile was a pioneer country deregulating and privatizing the electricity sector with the enactment of the Electricity Law in 1982. Transmission expansion and planning methodologies are relevant factors on developing countries like Chile, whose electricity demand has been growing up nearly 7% per year in the last decade. The evolving conditions of the Chilean energy market driven by different private agents joined to the continuous demand growth meant the need to introduce changes to the original 1982 regulatory framework, being transmission pricing and expansion procedures among the main issues assessed in an amendment to the Electricity Law in 2004. The transmission expansion mechanism initially based on bilateral negotiations was changed to a co-operative regulated scheme with participation of all the agents participating in the energy market. New investments in the trunk system are the result of the expansion plan proposed in a 4-year Trunk System Study. Every year the system operator CDEC must update the plan according to the current market conditions, with a consultation process involving all the agents, and then recommend the transmission projects to be developed. The planning role of transmission companies focalizes on the proposition of projects that meet market requirements and reliability standards. Transmission planning is needed because of the shared characteristic of the grid and transmission owners head the process to forecast the future use of the grid under different scenarios and uncertainties. Chilean experience is unique in the world because it was a pioneering step in a small system, in tuning with the opening of the country's economy.