Multi-operator Production Cost Modeling

While contiguous power systems are often operated by several regional system operators, optimization models have traditionally been designed to generate optimal system-wide scheduling decisions. This paper presents an approach to reflect the existence of multiple system operators making scheduling decisions within an interconnected power system. This approach is explicitly designed to reflect each operator's limited knowledge about other regions when making scheduling decisions. Detailed analysis using a modified IEEE Reliability Test System reveals that the approach mimics real system operations by providing imperfect information to each operator about external operations and external constraints. This approach scales to a 78 000-bus model of the Eastern Interconnection, where a regression analysis provides quantitative insight into which constraints cause inefficiencies when improperly managed in a multi-operator simulation. Because the approach generates distinct regional scheduling problems, unit commitment, and economic dispatch simulations can be applied to individual regions and solved in parallel, enabling production cost simulations at a previously intractable scale.