Meeting and Seminar Archive: Date:  May 10, 2010 Subject: Electronic Tagging and Managing Congestion in Electric Power Transmission Systems Speaker: Farrokh Albuyeh, OATI Abstract: Beginning in 1996, with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission’s (FERC) orders 888 and 889, the electric power industry began the task of unbundling generation of electricity from transmission, and Independent System Operators were created to manage the operation of the transmission grid to provide equal access to all generation facilities and power producers. At the same time an Open Access Same-Time Information System (OASIS) was created to help with the management and reservation of transmission facilities to accommodate energy transactions across the north American interconnected transmission system. Soon it became apparent that the resulting increase in energy transactions was exercising the transmission facilities in way not seen before, with the Control Area operators observing congestion in their transmission systems without knowing the source or the cause. The main problem arose from the fact that transmission reservations were made based on agreed upon “Contract Paths” which had little or no correlation with the flow of power on “Physical Paths’ as dictated by the laws of physics. To deal with this problem, and electronic tagging, or e-tagging, system was designed and implemented to provide Control Area operators with information on all energy transactions that flowed through their systems. In addition, an Interchange Distribution Calculation (IDC) system was developed to calculate the physical impact of individual transaction on the power grid and transmission equipment for use in support of Transmission Loading Relief (TLR) procedures that were developed to mitigate congestion in transmission systems. Over the years e-tagging has evolved to serve as a mechanism for the capture and the management of all data related to energy transactions not only to support congestion management but also to support tracking and management of Renewable Portfolio Standard (RPS) and for Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emission monitoring and tracking, among other things. In this presentation, we will provide an overview of the evolution and the functionality of e-tagging and will discuss the use of e-tagging and IDC in managing transmission grid congestion in North America. Speaker Bio: Farrokh Albuyeh received his B.S., M.S. , and Ph.D. degrees in Electrical and Computer Engineering, with emphasis on Power Systems, from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He is currently Vice President, Market Services and Consulting at Open Access Technology International (OATI), where he is involved in the development of software solutions and products for Smart Grid as well as for energy markets. Prior to joining OATI in 2004, he worked for AREVA T&D as the Director, Market Participants, where he was involved in the development of products and solutions for participants in energy markets. From 1985 to 1999 he worked for ABB as the Director, Product Development and Marketing where he was involved in the design and implementation of advanced transmission system analysis, and generation scheduling applications for Energy Management Systems and market applications for ISOs and RTOs. From 1983 to 1985 he worked for Energy and Control Consultants (presently KEMA) as a Senior Consultant, providing consulting services on load management and implementation of Energy Management Systems. From 1979 to 1983 he worked for the Energy Management Systems Division of Control Data Corporation (presently Siemens) as the Manager, Power Systems Development, where he was involved in the development and implementation optimizations techniques for the scheduling of power system generation resources as well for improving system reliability. Dr. Albuyeh is a Senior Member of IEEE Power and Energy Society and is the past chairman of IEEE’s Power Industry Computer Applications (PICA) conference. Dr. Albuyeh has numerous publications addressing various aspects of power system operations and planning. Back to main page