Incorporating Forecast Uncertainty in Utility Control Center

To improve the system control performance characteristics, maintain system reliability, and minimize expenses related to the system balancing functions, it becomes necessary to incorporate the uncertainty information into the scheduling, load following, and, to some extent, into the regulation processes. It is also important to address this problem comprehensively by considering all sources of uncertainty. This chapter considers sources of uncertainty and variability, overall system uncertainty model, a possible plan for transition from deterministic to probabilistic methods in planning and operations, and one example of uncertainty-based tools for grid operations. This chapter is based on work conducted at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL).