Pre-Solve Methodologies for Short-Run Identification of Critical Sectors in the ACSR Overhead Lines While Using Dynamic Line Rating Models for Resource Sustainability

Most transmission system operators (TSOs) use seasonally static models considering extreme weather conditions, serving as a reference for computing the transmission capacity of power lines. The use of dynamic line rating (DLR) models can avoid the construction of new lines, market splitting, false congestions and the degradation of lines in a cost-effective way. The operation of power systems is planned based on market results, which consider transactions hours ahead of real-time operation using forecasts with errors. The same is true for the DLR. So, during real-time operation TSOs should rapidly compute the DLR of overhead lines to avoid considering an ampacity above their lines’ design, reflecting the real-time weather conditions. Considering that the DLR of the lines can affect the power flow of an entire region, the use of the complete indirect DLR methodology has a high computation burden for all sectors and lines in a region. So, this article presents and tests three pre-solve methodologies able to rapidly identify the critical sector of each line. These methodologies solve the problem of the high computation burden of the CIGRÉ thermodynamic model of overhead lines. They have been tested by using real data of the transmission grid and the weather conditions for two different regions in Portugal, leading to errors in the computation of the DLR lower than 1% in relation to the complete CIGRÉ model, identifying the critical sector in significantly less time.