The sweeping restructuring process in electric power industry has led to more intensive and different usage of transmission grids not foreseen at the design stage. This has resulted in unanticipated congestion interfaces in regional transmission systems. The system is, however, unable to evolve at a rate that is needed to meet the rapidly changing demand of competitive markets. To make the matters worse, the functional unbundling of generation company and system operator will further threaten reliable operation of entire grid due to the lack of coordination between generation and transmission. Thus, a sensible way of dealing with congestion has become vital to maintaining current level of high reliability.
In this paper, we report the results of applying a novel congestion management method recently developed at MIT to a large electric power system. The method allows for market-based solutions with minimal reinforcement provided by system operator for reliability. The majority of reinforcement is in the form of information exchange on zonal pricing of transmission congestion determined ahead of time. Based on this information market participants and system operator can work out attractive trades while avoiding congestion. Stochastic computing tools needed for implementing the method are tested rigorously on New England Electric Power System consisting of approximately 2200 buses and 2800 lines.