Electricity market efficiency and voltage stability

Several electricity markets were created in the last two decades by deregulation and restructuring vertically integrated utilities. In order to serve the best interest of participating entities, it is important to operate electricity markets at their maximum efficiency. In most cases, electricity markets were formed to operate on existing physical power systems that had evolved over several decades as vertically integrated utilities. Location of generating stations, large urban load centers and enabling transmission systems were unique to every power system and followed the 'lay of the land'. Depending upon a power system layout, voltage stability and margin to voltage collapse are unique to it. While an electricity market is to be operated efficiently, its optimal generation schedule to supply energy through an electric power system has to be reliable and meet the strict standards including those that relate to voltage stability. This work elicits the relationship between market efficiency and voltage stability. To this end, a formulation and a solution algorithm are presented. Two contrasting 5-bus cases illustrate how the transmission system layout influences the relationship between voltage stability and market efficiency. The IEEE 118-bus system is also used to illustrate this relationship.