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Reliability Differentiation of Electricity Transmission

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Abstract

In many jurisdictions, electric utility restructuring has included the creation of an independent system operator (ISO) to dispatch generation, establish the market-clearing price, and allocate limited transmission capacity among users. This paper differentiates reliability through rate unbundling. We propose a capacity reservation tariff (CRT) to induce the users to self-select their preferred levels of reliability. Based on these self-selected reliability levels, the ISO can efficiently allocate limited transmission capacity. Our proposed CRT can be a practical solution to the transmission congestion problem faced by the California ISO in the implementation of retail access.

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Woo, CK., Horowitz, I. & Martin, J. Reliability Differentiation of Electricity Transmission. Journal of Regulatory Economics 13, 277–292 (1998). https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1008033221371

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