Power Grid Studies
dba Eugene G Preston, PE PhD
Reliability and Transmission Analysis
· Eugene G. Preston's Presentations
· Texas P.E. Board Registration
· email: g.preston@ieee.org
· office: 512-892-3621

IEEE Reliability Test System
IEEE 2020 RTS-GMLC and RTS 2020 files.
RTS 2023 ERCOT study files. Readme2.txt to see how to create the .exe file.
RTS 1979 files benchmarking exact solutions to Roy Billinton's 1986 paper.

The ERCOT, PJM , and CAISO markets are not working properly. Here is a suggestion to fix them:
Because nuclear and gas peakers have different operations and financing there needs to be different ways to pay for their services. The region such as ERCOT, PJM, and CAISO schedules the several day ahead capacity of nuclear and peakers that will be needed. Nuclear is paid a fixed energy price that covers their O&M, fuel, and capital costs. Gas peakers are paid an energy price for fixed O&M and capital cost but the fuel cost is covered by competitive bidding. This allows the region to assign gas plants a wide range of energy productions based on their bids. The ones with the highest prices may be awarded an operating status that is just standby whereas the lower priced energy bids are assigned in a dispatch order that has them running more of the time. The payment of capacity and O&M for fully dispatchable gas peaking and midrange gas plants is fully covered whereas this cost for intermittent generation is scaled down to the fraction of time they are available, i.e. their capacity factors based on nameplate ratings. This would allow renewables to compete with gas plants on a fair basis. Nuclear plants would be dispatched and operated as a separate market that pays for kWh generated but not bid on in real time.

Electric System Reliability:
Texas PUC Nuclear Task Force posts its findings and recommendations report.
NREL Gulf of Mexico Off Shore Wind isn't developing because of these problems.
My ERCOT 2023 probabilistic reliability assessment and 2024 summer forecast.
My presentation to the Engineering and Science Council of Houston Oct 7 2023.
The same presentation recorded in my home office prior to Oct 7.
The presentation slides. Why not 100% renewables? The Excel file is shown below as file ERCOT22A.xlsx.
ERCOT22A.xlsx is the current ERCOT system using 2022 hourly data with CO2 sources producing 59% of the energy (7.3 c/kWh).
ERCOT22N4.xlsx is the best future system using 52 GW nuclear, 40 GW wind, 50 GW solar, and ~60 GW gas 5% energy (9.7 c/kWh).
ERCOT22C.xlsx CRUSH thermal storage allows 100% fossil fuel free energy and is reliable during 2021 Storm Uri (10.2 c/kWh).
Dr Forsberg American Nuclear Society 2023 Nuclear thermal CRUSH storage presentation.

My 1997 Dissertation and 2002 ERCOT Seminar:
Dissertation on composite generation/transmission reliability (1.3 Mb) and at Univ of Texas Library...
...Appendices A B C D and Bibliography and Defense
My dissertation also revealed a way to perform Piecewise Quadratic time domain analysis.
IEEE paper on generation reliability modeling with transmission constraints
IEEE paper on transmission reliability modeling for multiple line outages (zipflow)
An ERCOT Seminar on Loss of Load Probability (LOLP) basic concepts.
The 1999 Synchronous Interconnection Study report to the Texas Legislature.
My 1979 Masters is a way to linearly allocate losses in large power systems.
AC circuit analysis program I wrote in college in 1969 predates Spice.

Other Interesting Stuff:
An interesting experiment showing that gravity field energy is not zero and is positive energy.
Interesting derivation showing how permittivity can make the electron look like a simple capacitor.
The electron capacitance model permittivity epi=epi0*(1 + a/r)^2 also predicts bending of light correctly.
Source of the fine line 137 constant is derived from EM as spherical energy like the above capacitor.
A simple gravity fields look at a neutron suggests it probably is a black hole.
Here are some examples showing how the speed of light is a hidden variable.
LC test Observation 3 in the above report, the Fortran program, and LC.exe.
New gravity equation explains galaxy rotation without needing dark matter.
Simple space ship experiment shows the speed of light must be variable.
Einstein's Assumption Fails conservaton of wavefronts test.
The apparent speed of light is a constant but is it absolute?
My twitter comments on energy and climate change.
2018 Tesla 3 charges with solar using this inverter.
Boomer Block Pools Scamming Information.
Year 2000 church mission trip to Honduras.
Links to other K5GP amateur radio info.
Greenland and Antarctica Ice Loss.
Kings Highway scary hike.
Previous 2022 web page.
Energy 2024 web page.