What is power scheduling?
Power scheduling, or load scheduling, is the logistical planning of physical power flows by an operator in the power market. A power market operator is a company which generates power, consumes power or physically trades power in the market. An operator feeds power into the system or takes it from the system at one or more locations.
Program-responsible parties are those operators which communicate directly with the Transmission System Operator (TSO) in a power system. They have an obligation to balance their own portfolio or to contribute to overall system balance. Where possible, the actual power flows are constantly measured. This is e.g. possible at large industries and at larger power generation assets. Other parts of the actual power flows, such as retail consumption or rooftop solar generation, are estimated on the basis of weather data and standard consumption profiles.
Operators must nominate their planned power flows to the TSO, with hourly, half-hourly or quarter-hourly granularity. This nomination starts day-ahead and can be updated closer to the actual time until the so-called gate closure. Gate closure is generally around 1 hour before the actual time of production or consumption.
The TSO grants the capacity to transport power through the network and is responsible for maintaining overall system balance. Once the operator has a physical position he has to nominate to the TSO the planned movements of power. Consequently, the administration and communication between the operators and the TSO plays an important role in the scheduling process.
Scheduling systems and software support the management of short-term physical power flows. They are either individual software applications or modules within a larger energy trade and risk management system. The software may be developed by companies in-house or licensed from external vendors, such as KYOS.
Power scheduling is closely linked to energy trading and risk management, to power demand forecasting, to renewable generation forecasting and to power plant optimization and dispatch. Scheduling systems collect all the positions of the operator, which can be a mix of:
- traded positions,
- varying levels of intermittent power generation, such as wind and solar,
- varying levels of power consumption, both measured and unmeasured (retail) consumption,
- flexible power generation assets,
- interconnection flows between different market areas
The scheduling system must be connected to all of the above sources of power flows and report those to the TSO. The scheduling system may also optimize the power generation dispatch and trading positions to keep the portfolio in balance; this is called real-time position management. The real-time position management may be a largely manual process or be performed with automated trading software.
KYOS Energy Analytics offers various software models for power producers, utilities and traders. For more information about power market scheduling, power plant dispatch optimization and real-time position management, see KYOS solutions for power.