With the electric industry's transition from a traditional rate-based regulation towards a deregulated energy marketplace, electricity consumers now have the ability to select their electricity services from various energy suppliers. Under the deregulated scheme, the transmission of bulk electric power continues to be regulated—by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), the North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC), and Regional Transmission Operators (RTO)—and remains the responsibility of local utility companies. This restructuring of the energy marketplace allows for consumers to have their electricity produced, transported and delivered from more than one provider. By supplying consumers with increased options for procuring their electricity needs, energy deregulation aims to improve reliability of the electric power system, serve increasing electricity demands, foster market competition, and thus lower the price of electricity.
The competition has affected how energy suppliers generate, transmit, and distribute electric power. For example, bulk power exchange between different electric-utility service areas has become more common today. There is an increased need to buy and sell electric power over longer distances. This transfer of power has placed greater demand and strain on existing generation and transmission facilities. As a result, many power grid regions have experienced power outages and curtailments. Potential causes for the power outages include unexpected energy demand spikes, unreliable electric power systems, and overtaxed electric transmission lines and substation components.
In order to meet the everyday demands for electricity and for the facilities used the transfer of bulk electric power are reliable and secure, the FERC, NERC and RTO's have developed reliability standards and rules for market participants that focus on energy planning, and facility design, management and operation. Moreover, energy planning and management helps with the increasingly complicated energy transactions, involving generation of bulk electric power from multiple suppliers, swapping electric power on the national grid, and sharing of regional transmission lines.
Consequently, it is desirable to introduce a method and system that can address the prior art's shortcomings while providing optimized energy transmission through asset planning and management during operations. It would also be desirable to have such a system that can accurately simulate and dynamically compute the electric transfer capacity ratings (also known as facility ratings, thermal ratings, or load capability), accounting for a plurality of variable factors including ambient weather conditions and material construction characteristics of components used in facilities that comprise electric power distribution, generation and transmission systems.