Keeping the electricity production in balance with the actual demand is becoming a difficult and expensive task in spite of an involvement of experienced human operators. This is due to the increasing complexity of the electric power grid system with the intermittent renewable production as one of the contributors. A beforehand information about an occurring imbalance can help the transmission system operator to adjust the production plans, and thus ensure a high security of supply by reducing the use of costly balancing reserves, and consequently reduce undesirable fluctuations of the 50 Hz power system frequency. In this paper, we introduce the relatively new problem of an intra-hour imbalance forecasting for the transmission system operator (TSO). We focus on the use case of the Norwegian TSO, Statnett. We present a complementary imbalance forecasting tool that is able to support the TSO in determining the trend of future imbalances, and show the potential to proactively alleviate imbalances with a higher accuracy compared to the contemporary solution.
Forecasting in power systems has been made considerably more complex by the introduction of competitive electricity markets. Furthermore, new variables need to be predicted by various market participants. This paper shows how a new methodology that combines classical and data mining techniques can be used to forecast the system imbalance volume, a key variable for the system operator in the market of England and Wales under the New Electricity Trading Arrangements (NETA).