IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER SYSTEMS, VOL. 16, NO.
4, NOVEMBER 2001
Valuation of Dynamic Reactive Power Support
Services for Transmission Access
Wilsun Xu, Senior Member, IEEE, Yi Zhang, Luiz C. P. da Silva, Student Member, IEEE, Prabha Kundur, Fellow, IEEE,
and Allan A. Warrack
Abstract—Competitive procurement of reactive power support
services is rapidly becoming a reality for deregulated electricity
markets. It has resulted in a great need to quantify the value of
reactive power support from var sources. This paper presents re-
search results on the development of new concepts and schemes for
equitable reactive power support valuation. Performance charac-
teristics of the proposed method are determined and practical ap-
plication issues are addressed. The validity of the method is verified
through sensitivity studies. This work emphasizes that the valua-
tion of reactive power support services should be based on their
contributions to system security and stability. The dynamic var is
the primary concern for the reactive power valuation problem.
Index Terms—Ancillary services, open access, reactive power
support, voltage security.
I. INTRODUCTION
T HE RESTRUCTURED electricity market identifies the
supply of reactive power as a key type of system support
services. As the knowledge on managing real power transac-
tions over an open- accessed network gradually matures, how
to qualify and compensate reactive power support service is
becoming an urgent research subject. From the perspective of
generator owners, proper compensation of individual genera-
tors reactive power output and reserve provides a clear market
signal for them to balance the need for real and reactive power
generation. From the perspective of transmission administrators
or operators, it is critical to recognize and capitalize on the
varied importance of different reactive power sources so that
the system security and stability can be maximized through a
competitive pricing mechanism.
Research on methods for valuation or pricing of reactive
power support has become quite active recently [1]. Most of the
published works are focused on determining the cost of reactive
power transportation, using the ideas of real power wheeling
[2]. Optimization theories are the main tools to determine the
spot prices, marginal costs, wheeling costs, etc., for the reactive
power [3]–[5]. Some of the optimization methods include
static security constraints such as voltage profiles and line
overloading [4]. A common characteristic of these works is that
they are essentially the extension of the real power wheeling
ideas to the reactive power domain. Such a formulation is
Manuscript received Arpil 7, 2000; revised June 29, 2001. This work was
supported by the Natural Science and Engineering Council of Canada strategic
grant.
W. Xu, Y. Zhang, L. C. P. da Silva, and A. Warrack are with the University of
Alberta, Edmonton, AB, Canada (e-mail: wxu@ee.ualberta.ca).
P. Kundur is with Powertech Labs Inc., Surrey, BC, Canada.
Publisher Item Identifier S 0885-8950(01)09429-9.
0885–8950/01$10.00 © 2001 IEEE
719
questionable since the reactive power is not a commodity and
cannot be shipped over a long distance. “Wheeling” of reactive
power has no practical use. Furthermore, there is no distinction
between the static and dynamic vars in such methods. It is
the dynamic vars that are of much greater value in terms of
supporting open access [6]–[8]. What is interested by industry
is to determine the relative importance or values of the dynamic
var sources such as generators in a system.
There is, therefore, a need to formulate and solve the problem
from a different perspective. This has led the authors to in-
troduce the concept of “value curves” to quantify the relative
importance of dynamic var sources [9]. An Equivalent Reactive
Compensation (ERC) method was proposed to determine the
value curves [9]. In this paper, the concept and method are fur-
ther improved by addressing practical application issues. Perfor-
mance characteristics of the method are investigated using two
real-life large-scale power systems. The validity of the method
is demonstrated through sensitivity studies.
II. THE CONCEPT OF VALUE CURVE AND ITS DETERMINATION
A typical scenario that requires to value reactive support ser-
vices is as follows: two real power producers are injecting reac-
tive power to a system. One producer is close to the load center
and the other is far away. It is required to compensate the two
reactive power sources differently. Equal compensation is not
desirable since it gives a wrong signal to the suppliers of system
support services and could eventually harm system security. It
is clear that a simple, qualitative generator ranking scheme is
not sufficient for this problem. What is needed is a quantitative
index that can represent the value (or the perceived usefulness)
of the reactive power output of each producer. The value should
vary as the output changes. The reactive power reserve level of
the producer should also be reflected in the index. We envision
that an ideal solution to this problem is a set of value curves
shown in Fig. 1. Each curve represents the value of the var pro-
duced by the respective var in terms of contributing to the system
margin. It should be noted that the value curves essentially mea-
sure the relative importance of the var sources. They have no
direct relationship with the cost (investment cost or opportunity
cost) of the sources. A var source could have a high cost yet have
a low value. In this case, it may not be profitable for the source to
offer reactive support service. Therefore, the value, not the cost,
is the main factor affecting the compensation level a var source
could expect to get. With the value curves, transmission admin-
istrators can develop technically sound compensation schemes.
720
Fig. 1. Value curves for assessing dynamic reactive power sources.
A. Equivalent Reactive Compensation Method
An Equivalent Reactive Compensation (ERC) method was
proposed to determine the value curves [9]. The basic idea of
the method is as follows: if a var source reduces its output, the
network voltage profiles and margins will change. To maintain
the same degree of system security, var compensations must be
added to the system. The total amount of compensation added
is, in effect, a direct measure of the value or importance of the
missing var output from source . The compensation can be
realized, for example, by fictitious condensers distributed across
the system. The condensers serve as “thermometers” to provide
an uniformed measurement on the impact of varying the output
of any physical var sources. The following is the procedure to
implement this idea:
1) Establish a solved case for the system condition of
interest;
2) Add fictitious condensers to each load bus. The output of
these condensers are zero at the base case. There are no
reactive power limits for the condensers;
3) Hold the reactive power output of all existing dynamic
reactive sources at the base case levels. This can be done
by representing them as buses injecting the base case
reactive power;
4) For the dynamic var source whose value is to be deter-
mined, vary its reactive power output from zero to its var
limit. The total reactive power output of all fictitious con-
densers, called , are calculated in the process;
5) Plot as a function of , the output of the study
source. This curve, called compensation curve, therefore
measures the impact of on the system;
6) Steps 4) to 5) can be repeated for all physical dynamic var
sources of interest. A family of curves can be generated.
Each curve represents one var source. The most important
sources are those that require a lot of generation. In
other words, the shortage of var output from these sources
has to be made up in large amount from other sources
across the system.
The computation effort of the above procedure is comparable
to that needed for calculating a curve. Namely, the value
curve of each source involves the calculation of 10 to 20 power
flow cases. For each case, most buses are buses because
of the existence of the fictitious condensers. The chance of en-
countering numerical problems is therefore lower than that of
the curves. Sample results of the ERC method applied to a
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER SYSTEMS, VOL. 16, NO. 4, NOVEMBER 2001
Fig. 2. A simple system for concept illustration.
simple 5-bus system (Fig. 2) are shown in Fig. 3. The system
consists of three generators (buses 1, 2 and 3) feeding a load
center (bus 5). There is a distant slack bus (bus 4) that sup-
plies almost no power to the load but serves as a reference to
the system. The fictitious condenser is added to bus 5 in this
case. Fig. 3(a) shows the results for the case of different gener-
ator distances. The closest generator (G1) has the highest
value for almost entire curve. The index of G3 has a large vari-
ation. As decreases the index first exceeds other curves and
then stops before reaching zero. Although this appears in con-
tradiction to common perception, the results are correct. Further
study shows that the phenomenon is caused by the need for G3
to ship its real power to the system over a long distance. If there
is a shortage of , the system has to provide a lot of var to
make up the difference. When gets too low, the generator
becomes incapable of shipping its real power to the system. An
important implication of these results is that the var output of a
generator has two purposes. One is to support the shipment of
its own generated power into the grid and the other is to sup-
port the system voltage. To verify this conclusion, a case with
zero real power output from G1 and G3 is analyzed. In this case,
the sole purpose of the generators is to provide reactive power
support. Results, shown in Fig. 3(b), confirm the common un-
derstanding that G1 is more valuable due to a shorter distance
to the load center.
It is fair to say that the ERC method may not be the only one
suitable for determining the value curves. During the course of
this project, we have tried two other types of methods. The first
type is the sensitivity-based methods. The key idea here is first
to define a security index and then to determine the effect of
each generator output on the index. A typical security index is
the system margin determined from the curve. A var source
that causes a higher security index response can be considered as
more important. The main problem encountered by this method
is that the sensitivities are close to zero for many var sources.
This is because most var source sources, if acting by them-
selves alone, have little impact on improving system margin.
The second type is the stress-based methods. These methods
monitor the responses of individual var sources when the system
is being stressed. Reactive sources that are most responsive to
stresses can be considered as the highly valuable ones. Sample
forms of stresses are the line outage, generator outage, or load
increase. This type of methods did not work well either. The
methods require to freeze the output of all var sources except
the one whose value needs to be determined during the stress
process. For large scale systems, this approach seldom results
in converged power flow solutions since a single var source is
normally insufficient for the system to deal with stresses that
have a system wide impact. Due to space limitation, detailed
discussions on these methods are omitted.
XU et al.: VALUATION OF DYNAMIC REACTIVE POWER SUPPORT SERVICES FOR TRANSMISSION ACCESS
(a)
Fig. 3. Compensation curves for the test system. (a) All generators have P output. (b) G1 and G3 have no P output.
Fig. 4. Value curves for the test system.
B. The Value Curve
The curves contain good technical information. But
they are not suitable for assessing the “value” of each source. A
transform is proposed to convert the compensation curve into a
value curve. This method is summarized as follows [9]:
(1)
where is the compensation curve for the th reactive
source. is the lowest permissible var output of the source.
The value curves corresponding to Fig. 3(a) are shown in Fig. 4.
The figure shows that is the most valuable one. As analyzed
before, this is true since the value includes two components, one
for shipping generated power and the other for supporting the
system. The figure indicates that G3 has zero value in the range
of 0 to . It also makes sense since G3 must generate at
least to start shipping power into the system.
The value curve represents the system-wide var savings one
can achieve if the output of a dynamic var source is increased.
More savings a generator can give to the system implies more
important it is to support system security. The value curves can
be further transformed into dollar Var curves to price the re-
active power of different dynamic reactive power suppliers. For
example, a possible (and simplistic) method to determine the
721
(b)
amount of monetary compensation for reactive power support
is shown in the following equation:
(2)
where
monetary compensation for var source ;
value of produced or reserved var of the source;
total monetary compensation available;
total value of all var sources.
Parameter can be established using simple or compli-
cated economic principles.
III. A GENERALIZED EQUIVALENT REACTIVE COMPENSATION
METHOD
The ERC method summarized in the previous section has
demonstrated a potential to solve the reactive source valuation
problem. There is a problem, however, due to the indiscriminate
use of fictitious condensers. Since all load buses are equipped
with ideal condensers, the contribution of each condenser can
be significantly influenced by its distance to the study generator
[6]. It has no relationship to the size of bus load. As the fictitious
var injections can also be viewed as shedding of reactive loads,
it is desirable to relate the contribution of each fictitious source
to its bus load size. The distribution of the equivalent var injec-
tions would reflect the system loading pattern more accurately
in this way.
Two methods have been proposed to solve this problem.
The first method is to represent the fictitious condensers with
a SVC – characteristic instead of the ideal constant voltage
characteristic. The slope of the – characteristic is a function
of the bus load size. If a bus has a smaller load, the slope of its
fictitious SVC will be larger. It will take a larger voltage varia-
tion for the SVC to produce the same amount of var injection.
Thus the amount of var output from a fictitious source becomes
directly related to its load size. The second method is to set
reactive output limits for the fictitious generators. The var limit
can be set in proportion to the size of bus MVA load as follows
(3)
722
(a)
Fig. 5. k
Output of fictitious condensers as affected by constant . (a) Distribution of condenser output. (b) Number of condensers with significant
(a)
Fig. 6. Sample results for the BC Hydro system. (a) Compensation curves. (b) Value curves.
where
reactive limit for condenser at bus ;
and real and reactive loads at the bus;
constant applied to all fictitious condensers.
Typical value of is 15% to 100%, depending on the con-
vergence characteristics of the study system. A larger gives
better load flow convergence. With the var limits, condensers
connected to buses with small loads are unable to inject large
amount var into the system. More fictitious condensers will
share the var shortage.
Extensive case studies on large scale systems have shown that
the limit model have more advantages. One of the main disad-
vantages of the SVC model is that the – slopes cannot be very
large due to load flow convergence restrictions. But small –
slopes are unable to produce sufficient differentiation among the
outputs of condensers at different load buses. The SVC model is
also more difficult to implement. The limit model is therefore
adopted for use as a generalized ERC method. Fig. 5(a) illus-
trates the method’s performance. The -axis is load bus number
ordered by the amount of fictitious injection and the -axis is
the output from the fictitious condensers. It can be seen that
as the constant gets smaller, more condensers contribute to
support the system. Fig. 5(b) also demonstrates that the limit
method can get more condensers to contribute with var support.
This chart plots the number of condensers outputting more than
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER SYSTEMS, VOL. 16, NO. 4, NOVEMBER 2001
(b)
Q output.
(b)
1% of total injected ( ). The results show that, for the
model ( ), there are only 4 condensers contributing. For
the case of %, the contributing condensers are about 10.
Another significant improvement to the basic ERC method
is that one can add fictitious condensers to selected zones or
areas only. With this approach, the value of a generator’s var
output can be quantified with respect to its support to specific
load centers.
IV. PERFORMANCE CHARACTERISTICS
The ERC method has been tested extensively on two
large-scale power systems. One is a 1200-bus BC Hydro
system and the other is a 1800-bus Alberta system. This
section presents performance characteristics of the method.
The method is implemented using the var limit model and the
fictitious condensers are added to the entire study area.
A. Basic Performance Characteristics
Sample compensation and value curves are shown in Figs. 6
and 7. These curves are obtained for the base case conditions.
The results suggest that both the compensation and the value
curves follow similar trends to those observed from the small
test case. Some compensation curves have negative values. This
is because the generators have a very small or even negative var
XU et al.: VALUATION OF DYNAMIC REACTIVE POWER SUPPORT SERVICES FOR TRANSMISSION ACCESS
(a)
Fig. 7. Sample results for the Alberta system. (a) Compensation curves. (b) Value curves.
Fig. 8. Variation of valuation results with respect to constant k.
output at the base case. The value curve is not affected by the
existing var output. Those who are familiar with either test sys-
tems may notice that some remote generators exhibit high value
curves. This phenomenon is again caused by the reactive power
needed for those generators to send their own real power output
into the grid. The total values of the vars from such generators
are therefore high.
The impact of constant on the valuation results was inves-
tigated. This study calculates the value of each generator with
as a parameter. Fig. 8 plots the value results when the generators
produce 50% of their maximum var output. The figure suggests
that for most generators, the values are not sensitive to the con-
stant . Two large remote generators (MCA and REV) exhib-
ited some degrees of value variation. This is due to the fact that
these remote generators need a lot more to compensate
their var output reductions. Many far away fictitious condensers
will participate as a smaller is used. The total therefore
becomes large. In spite of these variations, consistent var valu-
ation results can be maintained if a system specific is chosen
and used consistently.
The impact of system loading levels on the var valuation re-
sults was also investigated. This is done by calculating the value
curves for the base case and for the curve nose point case.
Fig. 9(a) shows the value results when each generator has 20%
and 50% output respectively. It can be seen that the values of
723
(b)
supports are larger in the nose point case. It makes sense in-
tuitively. Another reason for the value increase is that the large
generators produce more real power at the nose point. More re-
active power must be produced by these generators to support
the shipment of their increased real power output. This case fur-
ther demonstrates the need to separate the two functions of a
generator’s reactive power output. An attempt is made here to
determine the impact of real power shipment on the value index.
Fig. 9(b) shows the var value per MW generator output. It can be
seen that the order of the generators has changed. Some smaller
generators that are close to load centers exhibit more values per
MW output. Two large generators have smaller per MW values
at the nose point case. Our explanation is that a larger portion
of the var output of these generators is used to support their in-
creased real power output at the nose point case. Results ob-
tained from the Alberta system are similar to those from the BC
Hydro system.
B. Contingency Study Results
The purpose of contingency studies is twofold. Firstly, it is
a way to verify the performance of the ERC method. Secondly,
the impact of contingencies on reactive power support valuation
is itself a subject of interest. It is important to know how the
contingencies change the valuation results. The procedure of
contingency studies is as follows:
Apply a line contingency to the base case and establish
a post-contingency case;
Determine the compensation and value curves for the
post-contingency case;
Repeat the above process for different contingencies;
and
Determine the value difference between the contin-
gency case and the base case;
This procedure deals with each contingency case as a new
case. The value of a generator is expected to be different for dif-
ferent contingencies. 15 critical contingencies are selected for
each system. This study produced more than 400 value curves.
Test results on both systems show that the post-contingency
value curves are also monotonically-increasing curves. To
724 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER SYSTEMS, VOL. 16, NO. 4, NOVEMBER 2001

(a) (b)

Fig. 9. Comparison of var values between two load levels. (a) Total value of var support. (b) Value per MW output.

(a) (b)

Fig. 10. Generator var value change with respect to line contingencies. (a) BC Hydro system. (b) Alberta system.

(a) (b)

Fig. 11. Total value change as a function of line contingencies. (a) BC Hydro system. (b) Alberta system.

facilitate the digestion of the results, the differential value
curves and data between the base case and the contingency
cases are used. Fig. 10 shows the changes of the value results
at 50% generator var output for three different contingencies.
As expected, some generators exhibit significant value change
and the contingencies increase the value of reactive power
support services. Fig. 11 shows the total value change of all test
generators with respect to different contingencies. It is noted
from the results that the critical contingencies cause more value
change than the non- critical contingencies. Fig. 12 correlates
total value change with the pre-contingency line flow. A good
correlation can also be observed from the figure. Both Figs. 11
and 12 demonstrate that the ERC method has a good agreement
with engineering judgment.
The results have shown that different load patterns and system
configurations will result in different value curves for the same
XU et al.: VALUATION OF DYNAMIC REACTIVE POWER SUPPORT SERVICES FOR TRANSMISSION ACCESS 725

(a) (b)

Fig. 12. Correlation of total value change with pre-contingency line flow. (a) BC Hydro system. (b) Alberta system.

(a) (b)

Fig. 13. Correlation of QERC with the system PV margin reduction. (a) BC Hydro system. (b) Alberta system.

generator, which is expected. Each value curve can be used to
establish a compensation price for system support services. Al-
though this approach is more accurate, it is somewhat cumber-
some. We propose a comprehensive value curve for application
in different operating scenarios. This value curve can simply be
a weighted summation of all value curves for each generator.
For example, the following equation can be used to construct
such a curve for particular generator:
(4)
where
combined value curve for the study generator;
value curve for th contingency (including base case);
weighting factor for each case.
V. VERIFICATION STUDIES
Verification of the proposed method is a challenging task
since we are dealing with a new concept and there are no
“correct”results available for comparison. In fact, if there were
a technique that could thoroughly verify the ERC method,
the technique itself would be a good tool for reactive support
valuation. In spite of this problem, the validity of the proposed
method can be checked indirectly by assessing its relationship
with system power transfer capabilities, as the goal of reactive
support valuation is to enhance system security [7], [8]. Several
voltage stability related indices are therefore used for the
purpose of verification:
• Margin: If a generator is very important, withdrawing
its var support will likely lead to significant reduction of
system margin.
• Generator Output Sensitivity: Generators will increase
their reactive power output if a system’s reactive power
demand increases. Important generators are expected to
have more significant increase in their output.
• Impact of Contingencies: When contingencies are applied
to a system, the reactive power output of each generator
will increase. Important generators are expected to output
more reactive power.
The correlation of ERC results with the margins is done
as follows: for each test generator, an ERC index is calculated.
The reduction of system margins calculated from the base
case and a case without the test generator’s var support is also
determined. The ERC index is then compared to the margin re-
duction index. A positive correlation between the two indices
would indicate the usefulness of the ERC method. Fig. 13 shows
the correlation results. A good correlation is observed.
The generator output sensitivity method monitors the var
outputs of all dynamic var sources as the system reactive
726
(a)
Fig. 14. Correlation of QERC with the generator output sensitivity. (a) BC Hydro system. (b) Alberta system.
(a)
Fig. 15. Correlation of QERC with contingency impact. (a) BC Hydro system. (b) Alberta system.
Fig. 16. Determining the value of reactive power reserve.
load increases. If a generator is important, it tends to output
more reactive power. The reason to increase reactive loads
only is to maintain the same real power generation pattern
for the system. Fig. 14 shows the correlation results for a 2%
reactive load increase. A general correlation pattern can be
noted from the figure. The discrepancies are caused by the fact
that the generator output sensitivity is not a true sensitivity:
all generators respond to the load increase. True sensitivity
indices cannot be obtained for this verification study due to
convergence problems.
The correlation with contingency impact is done by applying
15 critical contingencies to the test systems. The resulting
total var output increase of each generator, for all contingen-
cies, is used to correlate with the results. Important
generators are expected to exhibit more noticeable var output
responses to the contingencies. The results, shown in Fig. 15,
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER SYSTEMS, VOL. 16, NO. 4, NOVEMBER 2001
(b)
(b)
indicate that sufficient correlation does exist. The GENESE
generator in Fig. 15(b) has a small reserve and it reaches
limit early when contingency is implemented. As a result, its
post-contingency var increase is small.
All correlation study results indicate that the ERC method
can provide a consistent measurement of the value of reactive
power support. The imperfect correlation shown in some of the
results is more likely due to indirect comparisons rather than the
performance of the ERC method.
VI. THE VALUE OF REACTIVE POWER RESERVE
There are two types of reactive power support from dynamic
var sources. One type is the produced reactive power and the
other is the reactive reserve. The value of produced var can be
obtained from the value curve directly. The value of reactive
reserve, on the other hand, cannot be calculated as the differ-
ence between the value of produced var and that at the generator
limit. This is because the var reserves of some (remote)
generators may not be fully utilized by the system. The max-
imum potential contribution of each var source can be deter-
mined using the well-known curve method. We propose to
use the var output of each source at the curve nose point
as the maximum potential var contribution of that source. The
value of reactive power reserves can be determined according
to Fig. 16. In the figure, is the maximum var a source can
inject to the system when the system is stressed to the limit (i.e.,
XU et al.: VALUATION OF DYNAMIC REACTIVE POWER SUPPORT SERVICES FOR TRANSMISSION ACCESS
(a)
Fig. 17. Values of produced versus reserved reactive power support. (a) BC Hydro system. (b) Alberta system.
curve nose point). For important var sources, is typi-
cally equal to . But for remote generators, it is possible that
is less than . This means that the var capability of
the generator cannot be fully utilized due to system constraints.
Fig. 17 shows the results obtained from both test systems. It can
be seen that reserves of some generators indeed have less values
than those of other generators, although the produced var has a
lot more value. It should be noted that is contingency de-
pendent. Therefore the total reserve value should be determined
using a formula similar to (4).
VII. CONCLUSION AND FUTURE WORK
This paper has presented a systematic investigation on the
subject of how to assess the relative importance of different
dynamic var sources. An alternative formulation, the value
curve, has been introduced for the var valuation problem. An
Equivalent Reactive Compensation method has been proposed
to address the problem. Extensive test results indicate that
the ERC method is capable to accomplish such a task. The
method provides not only a rank of the sources but also a
quantitative value index for different source output levels. Main
contributions of this work can be summarized as follows:
1) The papers have established an alternative framework for
valuing and compensating dynamic reactive power sup-
port services. It is the dynamic reactive power support that
has critical importance to system security. The concept of
value curve is introduced.
2) A method has been proposed to solve the problem. The
key idea of this method is to determine an equivalent
value for the produced or reserved var of each dynamic
var source. The equivalence makes it possible to compare
the var support from different sources on a common basis.
3) Extensive analysis and case studies have been conducted.
As a result of these studies, major issues related to reac-
tive support valuation are clarified and an adequate foun-
dation for further work in this area has been established.
The test results also verified the performance of the pro-
posed method.
As a new area of research, our work can only address some of
the key issues related to reactive support valuation. A lot more
727
(b)
follow up research is needed to improve the proposed method
for eventual industry use. New methods could also be devel-
oped. Our next research effort will focus on the following two
subjects:
1) Develop concepts and methods to separate the value of
reactive support that is used for helping the shipment of
real power from that for improving system security.
2) Extend the proposed method to the cases where var
sources absorb reactive power and establish a compre-
hensive valuation method for the cases of var generation
and absorption.
In the long run, there is a need to develop concepts and tech-
niques for valuing both dynamic and static var support services
in a unified framework, since the static var support is often used
to increase reserves for dynamic var sources and for loss mini-
mization. There is a tradeoff between the objectives to increase
security and reduce losses. The overall value of a var source
should reflect such constraints. New applications could also be
identified for the value curve concept and the ERC method.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
The authors would like to thank the Alberta power industry
(such as the Transmission Administrator of Alberta) for input
and support of this project.
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Wilsun Xu (M’90–SM’95) is presently a full professor at the University of Al-
berta and is a member of a NSERC strategic project team to research open access
issues.
Yi Zhang worked as a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Alberta in 1999
and is currently with RTDS Inc.
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER SYSTEMS, VOL. 16, NO. 4, NOVEMBER 2001
Luiz C. P. da Silva is working toward a Ph.D. degree at UNICAMP. At present,
he is a visiting Ph.D. student at the University of Alberta, Canada. His research
interests are power system voltage stability.
Prabha Kundur (F’85) is currently President and CEO of Powertech Labs Inc.
at Surrey, B.C and an adjunct professor of UBC. Dr. Kundur is a member of a
NSERC strategic project team to research open access issues.
Allan A. Warrack received the Ph.D. degree from the Economics at the Iowa
State University in 1967. He is currently a full professor at the Faculty of Busi-
ness, University of Alberta. He has been actively involved in the regulation and
restructuring of Alberta’s power industry since 1975. Dr. Warrack is a member
of a NSERC strategic project team to research open access issues.