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This paper examines the technical efficiency of electricity supply across 11 electricity distribution companies using the Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA). The analysis was performed with a recent and extended data from 2015 to 2022. The output indicator for calculating electricity supply efficiency is electricity supply proxy by energy received by each electricity distribution company. The input indicators are network losses (proxy by transmission losses) and aggregate technical commercial and collection losses (ATC&C). The results show that all electricity distribution utilities are technically inefficient in electricity supply to a varying degree. Four electricity distribution companies performed above 45 percent level of technical efficiency, while two operate at less than 80 percent. Also, the efficiency performance of the 11 distribution companies worsened since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic era. Thus, privatization has not eradicated technical inefficiencies in the electricity supply. The inefficiencies in the electricity distribution sub-sector are partly due to technical constraints from network losses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Financing is the property of Financing and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The privatization exercise that led to the creation of 11 distribution companies (Discos) is yet to yield the result of meeting the electricity supply needs of Nigeria. It is in realization of this fact that the Federal Government of Nigeria recently made different proposals and regulations to increase efficiency, availability, and competitiveness within the power industry. This article establishes a technical gain ratio to measure the impact of scaling up smart metering on the aggregated technical commercial and collection (ATC&C) losses. The ATC&C loss is the difference between the amount of electricity received by a distribution company from the transmission company and the amount of electricity for which it invoices its customers plus the adjusted collections loss. To achieve this objective, reviews of historical data of the Discos ATC&C losses and customers’ metering records as published by the Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC) for 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, and 2020 were carried out. In addition, efforts were made to mathematically model the relationship between % metering and % ATC&C losses as this was the framework to help carry out effective forecasts and analyses of the study in order to show the impact level of the strategy employed. One of the salient technical contributions of this article was that it established that for every 1% increase in metering installation, there is a proportionate 0.8% decrease in ATC&C losses, provided all other factors responsible for technical and commercial losses remain constant. Consequently, improved ATC&C loss reduction would be achieved if Discos adopt a combination of other strategies that would ensure reduction in technical and commercial losses in addition to aggressive deployment of meter assets. However, in practice, factors causing technical and commercial losses are never constant as system components depreciate/burn out with time, energy theft, and pilferage, and meter tamper/bypass is on the increase daily; meter deployment is not aggressive enough to match utility customers’ growth. Hence, the adoption of combined modern strategies in addition to aggressive metering in tandem with customers’ growth has to be employed by Discos in a deliberate attempt to reduce ATC&C losses.

The establishment of Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC) was to ensure existence of regulatory framework to enhance Electricity Distribution Companies (DISCOs) performance. However, the extent to which NERC has discharged her functions in Nigeria is of great concern. Therefore, this work investigates the effect of NERC on the performance of Ibadan and Ikeja DISCOs. Explanatory mixed-method was employed for the research with role theory adopted as analytical framework. The finding revealed that NERC failed to provide regulatory environment to promote the thriving of DISCOs. Hence, we recommend, amongst others, the revision of NERC act to inject technocrats into its administration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To survive, organizations should inevitably work based on sustainability principles in an ever-increasing changes of markets. Appropriate flexibility and responsiveness are particularly important when considering sustainability issue and market changes in clustering problem. One of the uses of clustering can be allocation of resources and equipment for providing the highest level of customer service which has been a matter of concern for decision makers in distributive companies. Capacitive clustering is a common method for solving allocation and distribution problems. However, traditional clustering models ignore sustainability criteria in defining clusters' capacity. The objective of this study, therefore, is to propose a novel method for optimizing resource allocation for customers given the sustainability criteria. Capacitive clustering is a technique that has a widespread application in data mining. This approach has been used for equipment distribution, sales targeting, market segmentation, etc. One prevalent clustering method is growing neural gas network (GNGN) technique. GNGN is a neural network with uncontrolled learning. In this paper, for the first time, we utilize GNGN to cluster customers given sustainability criteria. Here, the clusters' centers are determined and allocated with regard to capacity constraints of the clusters. The obtained results in general can be regarded as an optimized sustainable distribution system in which the number of trucks, distribution routes as well as fuel consumptions and environmental pollutions are minimized. We can also refer to reductions in urban traffic, maintenance costs, staff costs, and decreases in the fatigue of drivers and distributers due to the proximity of supermarkets. An illustrative case study is done to indicate the applicability and remarkable contributions of the suggested clustering approach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The challenge of stable electricity supply in Nigeria with its harrowing effects on socio-economic development accounted largely for government decision for privatization of the power sector. However, the extent to which this purpose has been achieved requires investigation, which necessitates this study. Survey research design was adopted, with questionnaire administered on both residential and commercial customers of Ibadan and Ikeja electricity Distribution companies selected as focus for the study. Multiple regression statistics was used for data analysis. The result shows that both distribution companies (DISCOs) have brought no significant improvement to electricity supply going by the quality, billing, coverage, metering, load shedding, and response to customers' indicators. Thus we recommend that DISCOs should source for fund from the capital market in order engender customer satisfaction, inject fund for replacement or upgrade of dilapidated power equipments, provision of meters, especially, prepaid type while government make the business environment convenient for healthy competition and regulation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The expansion planning of a distribution network (DN) is studied separately and independently from the behaviour of the transmission network (TN) as well as other DNs. However, DNs are being converted from passive to active mode by extensively integrating distributed generations (DGs) into them. Hence, an uncoordinated expansion planning may lead to redundant investment cost and suboptimal solutions. Accordingly, the main motivation of this study is to propose a coordinated expansion scheme among distribution companies (DISCOs). In doing so, a novel bilevel game-based framework is presented to coordinate the decisions of DISCOs for distribution expansion planning problem. Primal–dual formulation is used to convert the bilevel problem into a single level one resulting in a discretely-constrained generalised Nash equilibrium problem. The generalised Nash equilibrium problem is further formulated as a mixed-integer linear program using Karush–Kuhn–Tucker conditions. The methodology proposed is applied to the IEEE 24-bus RTS with several 24-bus DNs. The results show that ignoring the action of other DISCOs may lead to the over- or under-investment in DG sector which consequently decreases the DISCOs' profit. The results also show that congestion in transmission lines can considerably affect the strategic decisions of DISCOs on DG investment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Distributed energy resources (DERs) and distribution network reconfiguration have considerable effects on both the economic and operational performance of distribution networks. However, the uncertain nature of renewable energy sources (RESs), wind energy, for instance, can bring about serious challenges to the distribution system operators and distribution companies (DisCos). Therefore, a suitable methodology is a matter of the utmost importance to handle the uncertainty of RESs. In addition, DisCos can benefit from the utilisation of energy storage technologies to increase the penetration of RESs into the system. In this regard, this study proposes a risk‐averse energy management strategy (RA‐EMS) in the presence of DERs, while the impact of uncertainties of RESs on the optimal configuration of the network is investigated. The uncertainty of RESs is modelled through the information gap decision theory, which has significant advantages such as low computational burden, no need for probability density function, and exact results compared to other methodologies for uncertainty handling. The proposed RA‐EMS model is implemented on the IEEE 33‐bus distribution system, and its superiority over the scenario‐based stochastic programming is demonstrated. The robust configuration of the system against RESs' uncertainty is obtained for different levels of uncertainty radius. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Przegląd Elektrotechniczny is the property of Przeglad Elektrotechniczny and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The enormous load growth in recent times has forced distribution companies to undertake comprehensive planning of the active distribution system (ADS) to maintain superior service to their consumers. Under different critical situations in the restructured power system, reconfiguration in combination with the incorporation of renewable energy sources (RESs) and distributed static compensator (DSTATCOM) must be utilised for accurate system planning. In addition, from a practical viewpoint, the time‐variant load demand of different consumers and the intermittency of RES units must be considered. This study proposes a modified multi‐objective particle swarm optimisation (m‐MOPSO) technique for ADS planning considering reconfiguration, RES, and DSTATCOM to enhance voltage stability, reduce pollution, improve reliability, and maximise financial benefits. In the proposed m‐MOPSO, a novel non‐dominant sorting strategy is used to maintain diversity among the non‐dominated solutions. The time‐varying system load, yearly load growth, and intermittent power generation of RES are considered to construct a realistic planning model. The proposed technique is tested on the 33‐bus ADS considering different planning schemes to provide the most suitable planning scheme to the ADS planners. Moreover, the accuracy of the proposed algorithm is confirmed by comparing it with other multi‐objective algorithms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this study, an improved crow search algorithm (ICSA) is proposed for the optimal allocation of renewable energy sources (RESs) and distributed static compensator in a practical distribution network (PDN) to improve system voltage, reduce line losses, maximise economic benefit, and decrease pollutants' emission. To improve the performances, the control parameters of ICSA are logically tuned to make them adaptive with the iteration. Voltage stability index is used to identify healthier and weaker buses (HBs and WBs) of the system and comparative performance analysis is conducted after placing the devices at the identified HBs and WBs. The proposed technique is applied for both the cases of reduced search space (only WBs) and full search space (all the load buses) to establish that the optimal placement is always obtained at the WBs of the network. The optimal allocation for each type of device is conducted considering the time‐varying characteristics of load demand and RES's power output, and their optimal performances are analysed in details, which will be helpful for the distribution companies to identify the most suitable device for incorporating in PDN. Furthermore, to show the effectiveness, the proposed algorithm is also compared with other algorithms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study proposes a unique method of bidding strategy which is based on bi‐level optimisation model for analysing the profits of the generation companies (GENCOs) and distribution companies in the day‐ahead and real‐time competitive power markets. The bi‐level optimisation problem includes lower‐level and upper‐level problems. In the lower‐level problem, market clearing model is presented, in which market clearing problem is solved, locational marginal price is minimised at load buses, net generation cost is also minimised with a simultaneous increase in profit with optimal placement of wind generator by assessing the conditional value‐at‐risk (CVaR). In the upper level, the profit is maximised by selecting the proper bidding strategy based on double‐auctioned market mechanism. To check the effectiveness of the proposed strategy, Monte Carlo simulation and scenario‐based approach are used to generate the scenarios considering the random line outages, generator outages and load variations. The CVaR is used as a risk assessment tool for the uncertainties that would inadvertently affect the profit of the GENCOs. The proposed approach is applied to the modified IEEE 30‐bus system to show the effectiveness of the proposed model and its impact on the bidders and suppliers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In order to provide reasonable economic signals for distribution companies (DISCOs) and further compensate for distributed generators (DGs) integrated in distribution networks equitably, the contributions of DGs to loss and emission reduction in distribution networks should be allocated according to their own responsibilities. Generally, the loss and emission reduction of the network can be allocated based on traditional cooperative‐game‐based allocation methods such as nucleolus method and Shapley value method. However, traditional cooperative‐game‐based allocation methods will result in the combinational explosion problem with the integration of a large number of DGs. In order to tackle this problem, minimum costs‐remaining savings (MCRS) method and Aumann–Shapley value method are employed for loss and emission reduction allocation. Simulation results of two cases show that compared with the allocation results of traditional cooperative‐game‐based allocation methods, the proposed MCRS method and Aumann–Shapley value method both have the characteristics of individual rationality, coalition rationality, and global rationality. Furthermore, neither MCRS method nor Aumann–Shapley value method has the problem of combinational explosion, which can reduce computational burden with regard to the integration of a large number of DGs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Incentive regulations of reliability have made a link between distribution companies' revenue and their service reliability. The companies have to decide how much to spend on various projects to provide an acceptable level of reliability while anticipation of load growth. Planners and decision makers require a comprehensive framework to optimally allocate available budgets to different plans with the highest benefits considering implementation of incentive regulation. This paper proposes a decision framework for the optimum share of expansion and reliability oriented plans in presence of reward–penalty mechanisms. A two‐layer optimization model is introduced, where in the outer layer, an iterative algorithm is applied to determine the optimal set of long‐term projects including Distributed Generations (DGs) installation. A heuristic optimization algorithm is employed in this layer. Considering long‐term plans, in inner optimization layer, the optimal set of mid‐term plans including feeder reinforcement, and preventive maintenance actions are determined using algorithms such as Branch‐and‐Cut and dynamic programming techniques. The model is further implemented on a test distribution network and the results are investigated through various case studies. Obtained results show the strong influence of incentive regulation on reliability indices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many companies’ motivation to implement an enterprise system (ES) is the improvement of the core process. For the distribution companies, the adoption of information technologies can open new selling channels. In this article we aim to synthesize the possible benefits of the ESs. In order to do this, we will analyse the benefits reported by a set of distribution companies after adopting ESs. We will address the benefits from the point of view of the ES’s vendors. We will use as a research methodology the case study. One of the contributions of our paper will be the development of a theoretical framework for the analysis of the benefits.

The worldwide needs to increase the reliability of the electrical grids and to reduce energy not supplied (ENS) are the major goals in traditional grids. Smart grids have key features such as intelligence, adaption and flexibility abilities, to reduce the effects of outages in society. This study proposes an optimised operational strategy which increases the robustness of smart grid against outages caused by bad weather conditions. The proposed method takes advantage of dynamic economic dispatch and hourly forecasted weather information. Intelligent scheduling of demand response programs and energy storage system, are formulated as a multi‐objective optimisation problem considering consumer interruption costs. In this study, the objective functions consist of benefit maximisation of the distribution companies, benefit of the distributed generation and energy storage owners (DGO). In the proposed approach, line interruption rates are affected by weather conditions and consequently the ENS cost will be influenced in each time interval. DisCohas the ability to modify energy cost to overcome bad weather conditions and reduce ENS in different time periods. Simulation results show that the presented method reduces the real operation and ENS cost for DisCo. In addition, DisCo increases the benefits of DGO. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The efficiency of electric distribution companies is assessed under a productive efficiency criterion viewpoint. The analysis methodology consists of the estimation of frontier production costs functions; a parametric and a non parametric function. Two individual technical efficiency measurements for the distribution business are obtained from these functions. The assessment confirms actions and strategies that result in cost reductions in distribution companies. An application within the framework of the last Chilean regulatory process is illustrated in this work.Este trabajo analiza la eficiencia de empresas de distribución eléctrica, bajo el punto de vista del criterio de la eficiencia productiva. La metodología de análisis consiste en la estimación de funciones de costo de producción frontera, una paramétrica y otra no paramétrica. A partir de las mismas se obtienen dos medidas de la eficiencia técnica individual de cada explotación, lo que deja en evidencia acciones y estrategias que conducen a una reducción de costos para las empresas de distribución. Se ilustra su aplicación dentro del marco del último proceso regulatorio chileno.

Load forecasting has always been an important part in the planning and operation of electric utilities, i.e. both transmission and distribution companies. With technological advancement, change in economic condition and many other factors (to be discussed in this work), load forecasting is becoming more important. The forecast affects as well as gets affected because of the load impacting factors and actions taken in different time horizons. However, due to its stochastic and uncertainty characteristics, it has been one challenging problem for electrical utilities to accurately forecast future load demand. This study aims at reviewing the different load forecasting techniques developed for the mid‐ and long‐term horizons of electrical power systems. Since there has never been an explicit literature study of the various forecasting techniques for mid‐ and long‐term horizons, this study reviews techniques for each of the forecasting horizons, citing various methodologies developed so far supported by published literature. This study is concluded with discussion on future research directions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, a new stochastic framework is proposed for multi-stage generation expansion planning subject to environmental/techno-economic constraints. In this framework, with a new point of view, impacts of expansion plans on strategic behaviors of both generation companies and distribution companies are evaluated. To do so, the proposed framework is developed as a three-level model. The lower level indicates a pool-based electricity market, the intermediate level provides strategic interactions among all market participants, and the upper level represents the generation expansion planning by considering the outcomes of the previous levels. To minimize risks of planning arising from severe uncertainties, a well-founded information gap decision theory is used to model both risk-averse and risk-taker decision makers. The newly developed model is a non-convex non-linear mixed-integer optimization problem. A new melody search algorithm and an innovative augmented Powell heuristic method are employed to obtain the final optimal solution. The feasibility and capabilities of the proposed methodology are illustrated on the 46-bus south Brazilian electric power grid. The obtained results from case studies validate the profitability of the newly developed framework. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Under a restructuring atmosphere, energy customers and producers generally create various bilateral real power markets. The transmission company usually carries out these bilateral power markets contained by the restrictions allowed through the power network design and working situation. The market operator can misuse the “power markets” and earn additional revenue. Flexible Alternate Current Transmission System devices are considered to be one such technology that helps in improving the bilateral real power markets. In this work, a new methodology for correct placement of Flexible Alternate Current Transmission System devices in the restructured power markets is proposed. A generalized evolutionary programming technique is projected to find out the optimal bilateral real power markets with and without Flexible Alternate Current Transmission System devices under a restructuring atmosphere. Flexible Alternate Current Transmission System devices, such as the Thyristor-Controlled Series Compensator, Static VAR Compensator, and Unified Power Flow Controller, are employed. Utilization of these devices helps in minimizing the cost and also helps in reducing the total overloads, excess power flow, and severity of overloading. A sample 4-bus system and 24-bus extra high-voltage Indian system are presented as examples to exemplify the use of this formulation to reduce the price of the bilateral power market. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Brazilian regulatory model of electricity imposes that distribution companies should acquire all your energy market related to captive customers on, regulated auctions, and distributed generation, whose energy is traded with public calls. An energy market forecast is designed by the utilities and this forecast has to be a 100% covered with contracts agreed from regulated trades. The challenge of utilities is to forecast their own energy market five years in advance, which brings to the process a high level of uncertainty. This paper presents a methodology for planning the purchase of electricity by distribution agents in the Brazilian regulated contracting environment (ACR). The contracting strategy covers a horizon of 5 years, with monthly discretization and the goal is to minimize the total cost of energy procurement strategy. The proposed model considers the current regulatory Brazilian Laws of energy contracting by distribution companies, i.e. energy purchases from auctions in the regulated environment, distributed generation - GD, Compensation Mechanism Surplus and Deficit - MCSD and short-term market. The uncertainties of future electric consumption are modeled following a fuzzy approach. Thus, the formulation if proposed model is a fuzzy non-linear programming problem. Results show the importance of the short-term modeling and the consideration of MCSD and GD in the Energy Purchase Strategy on the Brazilian Regulated Electricity Market. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This initiative work deals with the automatic generation control (AGC) of multi‐unit multi‐area power system in the prospective of deregulated power environment owing to load following issues. In present outlook, a deregulated four‐area power system having eight generation companies and eight distribution companies is treated as a plant model. The concerned objective is to intensify the bilateral behaviour and investigate the system AGC performance. In the state of deregulation, the influence of a novel quasi‐oppositional harmony search (QOHS) algorithm based Sugeno fuzzy‐logic (SFL) technique is proposed as an AGC optimisation task by showing its consequences on bilateral policy/dynamics. In the entire work, the proposed QOHS based SFL technique is incorporated for the tuning of on‐line, off‐nominal controller gains. The salient advantage of this control strategy is to provide good dynamic responses over a wide range of system parametric variations. The observations are based on the three deregulated cases which, generally, takes place in deregulated power market. The presented simulation results show that the proposed QOHS based SFL is a promising optimisation technique in the field of deregulated AGC study. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Competition in the electric power industry urges utilities to not only reduce the investment costs, but also to reasonably cut the operation and maintenance expenses as much as possible, while keeping both power quality and reliability requirements met. Reliability‐centred maintenance (RCM) has been proven to be in response to this dilemma in power systems and has been yet successfully applied in various engineering contexts. This study introduces a novel approach, as of the first steps of RCM implementation in composite power generation and transmission systems, to identify the critical components for the main sake of a more focused maintenance management. Criticality evaluation is, here, concerned with components outage occurrence possibilities and cost‐based consequences. A realistic market model has been implemented to account for the components outage consequences to the system different participants, that is, generation companies and distribution companies. The presented methodology is able to efficiently recognise the individual importance and contribution of each component in the cases of not only first order but also higher order contingencies. For the sake of demonstration, the proposed approach is applied to the IEEE reliability test system and IEEE 118‐Bus test system, and the obtained results are discussed in detail. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many companies' motivation to implement an enterprise system (ES) is the improvement of the core process. For the distribution companies, the adoption of information technologies can open new selling channels. In this article we aim to synthesize the possible benefits of the ESs. In order to do this, we will analyse the benefits reported by a set of distribution companies after adopting ESs. We will address the benefits from the point of view of the ES's vendors. We will use as a research methodology the case study. One of the contributions of our paper will be the development of a theoretical framework for the analysis of the benefits. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The task of this study is to valuate the investment efficiency of distribution companies. Although a series of publications and studies has been dedicated to this topic, it is difficult to find a general consensus in defining the investment efficiency of a company. Nevertheless if we simplify an imaginary company as a production unit in which a series of actions transforms inputs to outputs, efficiency can be understood as like an effort to achieve maximum value of the outputs together with minimum usage of inputs, where the inputs constitute investments by a company. The investment efficiency of a company can be measured by expressing the absolute values of selected inputs and outputs, a relative expression of inputs and outputs, and perhaps an expression of the difference between them. However, an examination of the efficiency of a certain company is impossible without a valuation of other companies. In view of the amount of benchmarking, it should be emphasized, that this study is dedicated to a certain category of benchmarking, which we may term investment benchmarking. This benchmarking can be defined as a comparison of companies in terms investment efficiency. The purpose of this comparison is not only to investigate levels of investment efficiency and to relate them to other companies from the same branch, but also to locate the greatest efficiency and indicate potential improvement.

Abstract: This paper proposes a new framework for the operation of distribution companies (discos) in the liberalized electricity market environment considering distributed generation (DG) units and carbon dioxide (CO2) emission penalty cost. The proposed short-term framework is a two-stage model. The first stage, namely day-ahead stage, deals with the activities of discos. This stage includes a optimization problem to minimize the costs of distribution company (operational and CO2 emission costs). The first stage is formulated as a mixed integer nonlinear programming (MINLP) framework using the Benders decomposition to determine the decisions of discos to buy power from grid, schedule the DG units and contract with interruptible loads (ILs). The results of the first stage are imposed as the boundary constraints in the second stage which deals with the activities of discos in an hour-ahead period. In the hour-ahead stage, the retailers determine the amount of purchased active and reactive power from the grid and the production of each DG unit in the energy and reserve market keeping in mind its day-ahead decision to maximize the desired short-term profit. Finally, the efficiency of the proposed framework is studied on a case study. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

An analysis is made of the impact of diverse regulatory mechanisms and financial incentives that aim at conciliating the interests of the regulating entity and distribution companies, while tending towards the implementation of energy efficiency policies on the power distribution sector. To assess the outcome of the power distributors on a given regulatory scenario, a production-possibility model based on data envelopment analysis is developed. The methodology used adapts results gathered from international case-studies in order to ascertain the efficiency degree achieved by each regulating scheme. The analysis is subsequently applied on four representative companies of the Chilean power distribution sector, undergoing different energy efficiency levels required by the regulator. The results reveal that the introduction of white certificates of energy efficiency outperforms the other methods considered, as it succeeds on eliminating the disincentives at a minimal economic impact. Comparing the energy production-revenue decoupling mechanisms with the investment of the 1% in energy efficiency programs yields that the first method achieves betters results, provided that the regulator sets energy efficiency goals below 4% a year, whereas the second method is more effective concerning the global impact on the distributors. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

A generic operations framework for a distribution company (disco) operating in a competitive electricity market environment is presented in this paper. The operations framework is a two-stage hierarchical model in which the first deals with disco's activities in the day-ahead stage, the Day Ahead Operations Model (DAOM). The second deals with disco's activities in real-time and is termed Real-Time Operations Model (RTOM). The DAOM determines the disco's operational decisions on grid purchase, scheduling of distributed generation (DG) units owned by it, and contracting for interruptible load. These decisions are imposed as boundary constraints in the RTOM and the disco seeks to minimize its short-term costs keeping in mind its day-ahead decisions. A case-study is presented considering the well-known 33-bus distribution system and three different scenarios are constructed to analyze the disco's actions and decision-making in this context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Pakistan's energy sector has undergone substantial reforms during the last three decades with the aim to improve its operational performance and to cater to the growing energy needs of the economy. In the wake of these reforms, the WAPDA Act was passed in 1998 to achieve operational and financial efficiencies. Pakistan's electricity market is still hampered by issues like extended blackouts, electricity thefts, high circular debt and poor service quality. The electricity distribution sector is thus an interesting case to investigate its efficiency in the post-reform period by examining the impact of service-quality parameters (SQPs), which have generally been neglected in the literature. Stochastic frontier analysis has been used to estimate technical efficiency, while the Malmquist Productivity Index is implemented to decompose total factor productivity (TFP) into scale change, technical change and efficiency change from 2006 to 2016. We conclude that the technical efficiency score declines from 98 percent to 36 percent with the inclusion of SQPs in the models. The results also indicate a negative trend in scale change, implying that distribution companies are not operating at the technically optimal scale. We propose that the regulatory body should change its governance regime and focus on incentive-based regulation instead of rate-of-return regulation. • We estimate technical efficiency of electricity distribution companies for post-reforms period. • Impact of quality of service parameters has been estimated on technical efficiency using SFA. • Malmquist Productivity Index is implemented to decompose TFP into scale change, technical change and efficiency change. • Technical efficiency score declines from 98 percent to 36 percent with the inclusion of service quality parameters. • We propose greater autonomy of regulatory body and adoption of incentives regulations instead of rate of returns regulations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The COVID-19 pandemic has hit the Indian renewable solar and power sector, supply chains, and businesses and severely hindered the sustainable energy climate transition. This paper assesses the impact of COVID-19 pandemic on power demand, the financial condition of power distribution companies, impact on electricity generation, increasing share of renewable energy sources, impact on the solar industry, under-construction solar projects and operational projects in India. This study further scrutinized the Indian renewable power and solar sector as a case study and explored issues and challenges currently being faced to manage the consumer load demand, including the actions taken by the utilities/power sector for the smooth operation of the power system. This paper also presents the different policies and regulations by the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy (MNRE), providing relief to renewable energy developers with a slew of support measures announced over the last few months. Finally, opinions on post-COVID era strategies for the Indian renewable energy sector are presented to support the government/policymakers/utilities not only to overcome the current crisis but also to overcome future unforeseeable pandemic alike scenario., Competing Interests: The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper., (© 2021 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)

Recent IEEE publications have been of great interest to those who have been investigating the requirements for power system planning in restructured, unbundled and competitive electricity markets. In particular, the increased uncertainty regarding generator siting and timing are problems that will tend to increase as competition in generation increases. The authors have been investigating a generic planning framework to meet the requirements of distribution companies in the United Kingdom with particular regard to embedded generation. The generic framework has been developed from an extensive survey of planning methodologies, with reference to standard industry planning practices and in recognition of the set of issues regarding embedded generation that require to be addressed through evaluation [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]