ABSTRACT
The restructuring process in the electric power industry over the last decade has led to several structural and regulatory issues regarding transmission grid operation and planning, not fully anticipated at the design state of the grid. The transmission system has not evolved at the rate needed to sustain increasing demand matched with negligible generation addition evidenced in the deregulated environment. This has caused somewhat unexpected bottlenecks like voltage instability, low operating efficiency, poor loadability, price volatility, frequency droop and congestion in the system. Moreover, the functional unbundling of generation and transmission operations is aggravated due to the lack of coordination between generation resources and the transmission system operator (SO). In this situation, the role of SO is not only to increase the profit margin of the market participants but also to improve the performance of the network for consumer welfare.
