Contingency ranking for bulk system reliability criteria

One key element of a deterministic bulk system planning criteria is the performance table. The table lists contingencies that planners must examine and sets the minimum acceptable performance level for those events. A basic premise is that lower performance levels, in terms of system impacts, are acceptable for events that are less likely to happen. However, the tables were developed based on planner's experience and intuition, but without a formal framework for their construction. Our focus is to use outage data and models for multiple outages to examine the likelihood of various contingencies. The Bonneville Power Administration revised its criteria based on this analysis. Keywords -- Bulk System, Criteria, Deterministic, Planning, Reliability, Transmission.