Risk-Aware Dimensioning and Procurement of Contingency Reserve

Current contingency reserve criteria ignore the likelihood of individual contingencies and, thus, their impact on system reliability and risk. This paper develops an iterative approach, inspired by the current security-constrained unit commitment (SCUC) practice, enabling system operators to determine risk-cognizant contingency reserve requirements and their allocation with minimal alterations to the current SCUC practice. The proposed approach uses generator and transmission system reliability models, including failure-to-synchronize and adverse conditions, to compute contingency probabilities. These probabilities are then used to inform a reliability assessment of the system using a suitable risk metric, i.e., expected energy not served. By iteratively learning the response of generators to post-contingency states within the SCUC we ensure reserve deliverability in this risk-assessment. The effectiveness of the proposed approach is demonstrated using the Grid Modernization Lab Consortium update of the Reliability Test System.