ABSTRACT
Early in the 1990s, the North American Electric Reliability Council (NERC) and the Electric Power Research Institute organized industry efforts to consider various approaches for reducing network congestion in a way that would be equitable and fair to all of the parties involved. Network congestion can be reduced by cancelling transactions, redispatching generation, reconfiguring transmission, or reducing loads. Consequently, all participants in electric power markets have taken a keen interest in network congestion problems and methods for relieving network congestion. Following extensive debate within the NERC committee structure, NERC adopted transmission loading relief (TLR) procedures as the primary means to be used by security coordinators for addressing network congestion problems. NERC’s TLR procedure follows the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission’s “Pro Forma Tariff.” The purpose of the NERC TLR procedure is to define the actions and communications required to safely and effectively reduce the flow on a flowgate.
