Ancillary-service details: regulation, load following, and generator response

摘要

The purpose of this report is to examine empirically these intrahour and interhour load changes and the responses of a utility's generating resources to those load changes. We analyze data, primarily from one control area, to see how it maintains ACE close to zero in an effort to meet the A1 and A2 criteria. Overall, we estimate that load following costs US electric utilities over one billion dollars a year. We first test alternative ways to identify trends over multihour periods using both regression analysis and rolling averages. Then, we consider several metrics for intrahour load following. Next we examine characteristics of load following for different time-averaging periods and compare the dynamics of loads and load following generation across these time periods. Finally, we consider the contribution of each load to the total load following requirements of the control area.