Monitoring Contracted Generation Deviation for Correction of Practice and Maintenance Prioritization PowerGen Africa Conference, Johannesburg, South Africa

摘要

Meeting customer electricity demand is the main objective of any power utility. Even though this is a simple and clear objective, the manner in which it is achieved holds numerous complexities that will ultimately determine whether a utility will be successful or not. One such complexity is to determine what combination of generating sources to use at any given time to satisfy the demand present on the system. Generating sources can vary in fuel-type, technology-makeup, capacity and scheduling cost. At any given point in time, there exists an optimal solution to the problem of satisfying demand in the most economical way. There are also multiple sub-optimal solutions where sources are utilized in such a way that the total generating cost is higher than the optimal solution. Generation contracting seeks to find the optimal economic solution to meeting demand.