International Research Journal of Education and Technology

Power sector has seen a rapid growth day by day due to industrialization and urbanisation. In order to meet the increased energy consumption & trades due to the increase of unplanned power traffic the transmission lines are frequently operated close to or even beyond their respective thermal limits. If the power traffic is not controlled there are chances that some lines may get overloaded and this is treated as congestion. In other words, congestion occurs when the transmission network is unable to accommodate all of the desired transactions due to a violation of system operating limits. Utilizing certain physical or financial mechanism in present day competitive market each utility manages the congestion in the system using its own guidelines. Privatization and de-regulation of electrical power markets have shown a vast impact on almost every power system around the globe. As deregulation is growing rapidly in electrical power sector there is attention on open access. Open access to network provides equal opportunities to use the available transmission system to all buyers and sellers. Due to increase in electrical energy consumption and because of presence of few uncertainties in the network, the line loading of the transmission lines increases, voltage profile at buses fall resulting in losses in the system and poor power quality & system stability. Hence, there is need to manage congestion in the network to achieve improved power quality & system stability. In a vertically integrated utility market, the central agency or single utility directly controls the activities like generation, transmission and distribution. It is a fact that irrespective of relative geographical location of buyer and seller, every buyer wants to buy the power from cheapest price/generator. As a consequence of this the transmission networks evacuate the power of cheapest generators would get overloaded if the transactions are approved