Reservoir Controller Transfer Function for Balancing Contingency Charges
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Solution Overview
Problem
Utility grids face challenges in controlling compensatory charges from plants to reservoirs to account for contingency discharges caused by random adverse events, particularly due to the 'long tail' distribution of these events, which can exceed individual plants' capabilities.
Innovation Solution
A digital controller system that uses a transfer function to balance compensatory charges across plants, based on normalized contingency discharges and exposure size classes, ensuring that the combined charges cover all contingency discharges while capping individual plant contributions and maintaining incentives for minimizing exposure to adverse events.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If individual plants are required to make compensatory charges equal to contingency discharges they received, then the reservoir can be made up for contingency discharges, but individual plants may not have sufficient capacity to provide required compensatory charges when rare large contingency discharges occur
Solution Approach 1:
The patent combines the compensatory charge obligations of multiple plants into an aggregate pool. Instead of requiring each individual plant to fully compensate for its own contingency discharges, the system aggregates charges from all plants connected to the reservoir, allowing the collective group to meet the compensation requirement even when individual plants lack sufficient capacity.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent introduces a new dimensional approach by implementing a transfer function that operates in the space of normalized contingency discharges rather than requiring direct one-to-one compensation. This transforms the problem from individual plant capacity constraints to a system-level distribution problem that can be solved through mathematical relationships between multiple variables.
2Adaptability or versatility
If a transfer function is used to distribute compensatory charges across multiple plants, then individual plant capacity constraints are addressed, but the complexity of controlling and balancing charges increases
Solution Approach 1:
The patent employs parameter changes by using a transfer function with adjustable parameters that relate normalized contingency discharges to normalized compensatory charges. The controller modifies these parameters dynamically to balance the aggregate compensatory charges against aggregate contingency discharges, providing a systematic way to manage complexity through mathematical relationships rather than ad-hoc control logic.
Solution Approach 2:
The system implements feedback control where the controller continuously monitors both contingency discharges from the reservoir to plants and compensatory charges from plants to the reservoir. The transfer function uses this feedback information to adjust the distribution of compensatory charges in real-time, ensuring that the aggregate charges balance the aggregate discharges while respecting individual plant capacity constraints.
3Ease of operation
If compensatory charges are capped at individual plant levels, then plants are protected from excessive financial burden, but the total compensatory charges may be insufficient to cover all contingency discharges
Solution Approach 1:
The patent merges the compensatory charge contributions from multiple plants into an aggregate total. By combining the capped charges from individual plants, the system ensures that the aggregate compensatory charges are sufficient to cover aggregate contingency discharges, even though each individual plant's contribution is limited by its capacity.
Data Source
AI summary
A method for balancing a transfer function, the transfer function being operable in a reservoir controller to determine a required normalized compensatory charge from a plant to the reservoir during a second time period based on a measured normalized contingency discharge from the reservoir to the plant during a first time period, has the steps:a) read in, to a computer system, a normalized distribution of normalized discharges for a plurality of reference plants in the size class of the plant; andb) automatically adjust, by a digital processor, one or more parameters of the transfer function such that an integral of the product of the transfer function and the normalized distribution of normalized discharges of the plurality of reference plants is about 1. The first time period occurs before the second time period.