Electricity tracing and loss allocation methods based on electric concepts

Competition in electricity markets requires the identification of the responsibilities in the use of transmission networks or the associated effects. For instance, the participation of generating utilities in losses caused in a specific line. A proportional sharing principle was used recently by many authors to elaborate a power-flow tracking algorithm. A new method is presented to assess the power output flowing from a specific generator to a specific load. The justification of the method is based on concepts of electric circuit theory. Its practical implementation requires only to compute a load flow and solve a linear equation system. The method is applied to determine ‘influence areas’ and to allocate losses among participants that share the network. An example of the determination of influence areas is presented and it is compared with the methodology applied in Argentina and Chile which is based on incremental methods.