Understanding and analyzing scheduled and actual flows of electricity on the transmission grid can provide insight into how traditional utilities, power marketers, and others use the system. It can indicate where and when the system is heavily or consistently used, and how schedules align with actual use.
The sources of data that provided information on scheduled and actual electricity transfers in the Eastern Interconnection of the United States are widely dispersed among the NERC registered entities.1 To address this gap, the U.S. Department of Energy, through the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, issued a contract to Open Access Technology International, Inc. (OATI) to identify and aggregate data describing scheduled transactions and actual flows in the Eastern Interconnection for the year 2011, 2012, and 2013.