Abstract
Nodal prices, or locational marginal prices (LMP), originates from the optimal power flow (OPF), are a key instrument in the restructuring of electricity. These nodal price signals can reflect the differential value of generation and consumption at each location arising from physical characteristics of electricity networks, namely the existence of losses and capacity constraints. They do also provide a measure for consumption and generation congestion management, both in the short and in the long run. Inspired by recent developments of power flow congestion distributed factors (CDF), we will re-examine the optimal power flow in terms of these distribution factors. The main contributions of this thesis can be summarized as follows: 1. We propose a fast method for calculating nodal prices of a power network. Its speed is compatible with the DC-OPF while the accuracy is compatible with the standard AC-OPF. 2. Instead of using the real power balanced equations at each node as the equality constraints in the standard OPF formulation, we use the total real power balance equations in the OPF formulation. As the number of equality constraints are significantly reduced, the computation time will also decrease. 3. Since the total system losses can be expressed in terms of CDFs, nodal prices, generation costs, loss cost, and congestion costs can also be easily obtained. Simulations on two IEEE Test systems have been performed to demonstrate the accuracy of the proposed method. Keywords : Optimal Power Flow, Nodal Prices, Power Flow Congestion Distributed Factors, Power Losses