Object oriented modelling and simulation of hydropower plants with run-of-river scheme: A new simulation tool

This paper presents the design of a component library for modelling hydropower plants, and describes the development of a new simulation tool for small hydropower plants with a run-of-river scheme. After reviewing the desirable features of simulation, an approach based on an object oriented modelling language, like EcosimPro, is presented. A general model of hydropower plant with run-of-river scheme is created with this component library. It provides the possibility of choosing a specific number of turbines and spillway gates. In this way, several hydropower stations of similar operating characteristics can be simulated using this same general model. It is expected to obtain interesting information in simulation like the reservoir level, water flows, turbine efficiencies, and so on. In addition, a graphical user interface has been designed in order to operate this general model more easily, to configure plant parameters and to simulate the plant behaviour under different conditions. Three real stations have been used as real examples for validating the model and testing the simulator: hydropower stations of Villafranca and El Carpio (Córdoba, Spain) and Marmolejo (Jaén, Spain)

Hardware-In-The-Loop Assessment of Robust Fuzzy Control Solutions for Hydroelectric and Wind Turbine Models

The interest towards renewable energy resources is increasing, and in particular it concerns wind and hydro powers, where the key point regards their efficient conversion into electric energy. To this end, control techniques can be used to meet this purpose, especially the ones relying on fuzzy models, due to their capabilities to manage nonlinear dynamic processes working in different conditions, and affected by faults, measurement errors, uncertainty and disturbances. The design methods addressed in this paper were already developed and validated for wind turbine plants, and important results can be achieved from their appropriate design and application to hydroelectric plants. This is the key issue of the paper, which recalls some considerations on the proposed solutions, as well as their validation to these energy conversion systems. Note that works available in the related literature that consider both wind and hydraulic energy conversion systems investigate a limited number of common issues, thus leading to little exchange opportunities and reduced common research aspects. Another important point addressed in the paper is that the proposed control design solutions are able to take into account the different working conditions of these power plants. Moreover, faults, uncertainty, disturbance and model reality mismatch effects are also considered when analyzing the reliability and robustness features of the derived control schemes. To this end, proper hardware in the loop tools are considered to verify and validate the developed control schemes in more realistic environments. Copyright (C) 2022 The Authors

A Virtual Hydroelectric Power System for Distributable Industrial Control System Security Research

Cyber security for industrial control systems (ICS) has been a rapidly growing area of interest and research for the last several years. The lack of an easily distributable platform on which ICS components can be built for use in security testing and result comparison among researchers presents a major issue. This thesis details the use of a virtual testbed environment to build a representative virtual hydroelectric power system (VHPS). The VHPS generates realistic Modbus/TCP network traffic between two separate ICS devices, a Master and a Slave, located on separate VMs. For security testing purposes, a method of session hijacking has been implemented as well as a Function Code Scan attack and a Setpoint Manipulation attack. The virtual environment, the VHPS, and the attacks have been packaged into an LXDE-based Fedora Spin VM for easy distribution

A Review on Expert System Applications in Power Plants

The control and monitoring of power generation plants is being complicated day by day, with the increase size and capacity of equipments involved in power generation process. This calls for the presence of experienced and well trained operators for decision making and management of various plant related activities. Scarcity of well trained and experienced plant operators is one of the major problems faced by modern power industry. Application of artificial intelligence techniques, especially expert systems whose main characteristics is to simulate expert plant operator’s actions is one of the actively researched areas in the field of plant automation. This paper presents an overview of various expert system applications in power generation plants. It points out technological advancement of expert system technology and its integration with various types of modern techniques such as fuzzy, neural network, machine vision and data acquisition systems. Expert system can significantly reduce the work load on plant operators and experts, and act as an expert for plant fault diagnosis and maintenance. Various other applications include data processing, alarm reduction, schedule optimisation, operator training and evaluation. The review point out that integration of modern techniques such as neural network, fuzzy, machine vision, data base, simulators etc. with conventional rule based methodologies have added greater dimensions to problem solving capabilities of an expert system.DOI:http://dx.doi.org/10.11591/ijece.v4i1.502

Wind/Hydro Power Generation Simulator

This project aims to design a wind or hydro power generation simulator. The original scope of this project was to construct a physical simulation apparatus in which wind/water speed data is fed to a microcontroller that adjusts the control voltage of a motor drive. The spinning DC motor would generate power via a coupled generator whose power output would be a scaled down version of wind/hydroelectric generator power output given the same wind/water speed input. Due to Covid-19, the project was altered to be entirely virtual and was made through Simulink in MATLAB. The virtual simulator attempts to mimic physical system behavior by feeding a user input array, over a time span of 30 seconds, representing wind/water speeds, over a time span of 24 hours, into a programmable function block meant to mimic desired microcontroller behavior. The output of this block is fed to a second function block acting as the system’s motor drive which drives the pre-defined DC motor module. The connected generator module’s output is connected to a DC-DC converter block in order to simulate the system’s ability to power appliances with a constant voltage despite the fluctuating generator output

Application of real-time simulation for hydropower plants monitoring

The global emission of CO2 has increased in the sector of power generation from countries outside the OECD, particularly in China which comprises two-third of the share. Meanwhile, OECD countries focus their effort in reducing their emission, where the industry area declined their emission by a quarter. Consequently, governments set up energy policies where renewable-based energies such as solar or wind energies, are highlighted. The drawback is the dependency of environment factors which generates power variations in the network leading to instabilities and a blackout in the worst case. The use of hydropower is an excellent complement to versatile renewable energy, capable of compensating these fluctuations and even be used as an energy storage. In Switzerland, hydropower is the most available resources and is constantly under development to increase capacity and energy-efficiency. Nevertheless, a lot of effort is put to extend lifetime of power generating equipment as much as possible in order to optimize the best timing for replacement or refurbishment, which requires efficient and flexible tools such as real-time simulations, which are widely used with the rapid development of computation technology. The objective of this present thesis is to study the feasibility of a multi-physics model-based real-time simulation with SIMSEN for an existing hydroelectric power plant. The concept of such system consists of using a validated model and achieves a real-time simulation taking into account boundary conditions such as water level of upstream reservoir, voltage of power network, but also set point of control system including turbine guide vane opening and the excitation system of generator. The system would enable to detect potential dysfunctions if the behavior of the power plant shows significant discrepancies in the simulation-measurement comparison during the real-time simulation. The study is divided into two main parts, which are the set-up of a test bench and the implementation of the real-time system in the power plant. The first part describes the methodology for setting-up a small-scale power unit which simulates similar behavior as a large scale one. The model includes the parameters from experimental tests used for parameters identification of synchronous machine. Two validations tests are presented: (i) a load variation (ii) sudden three-phase short circuit. The model validation is achieved comparing offline simulation results with measurement, followed by a validation in real-time with similar tests. The set-up of the test bench is concluded by a demonstration of feasibility in monitoring application by detection of a dysfunction during an opening failure of a circuit-breaker. The second part explains the modeling of a 72MW hydroelectric power plant, which includes the modeling of hydraulic components such as pipe, surge tank and Pelton turbine besides the modeling of generator. Two measurement campaigns were organized. The first consisted in collecting data in order to validate the present model. The second consisted of implementing the model running in real-time in a general-purpose computer, in the power plant and performed variations of active and reactive powers

International White Book on DER Protection : Review and Testing Procedures

This white book provides an insight into the issues surrounding the impact of increasing levels of DER on the generator and network protection and the resulting necessary improvements in protection testing practices. Particular focus is placed on ever increasing inverter-interfaced DER installations and the challenges of utility network integration. This white book should also serve as a starting point for specifying DER protection testing requirements and procedures. A comprehensive review of international DER protection practices, standards and recommendations is presented. This is accompanied by the identifi cation of the main performance challenges related to these protection schemes under varied network operational conditions and the nature of DER generator and interface technologies. Emphasis is placed on the importance of dynamic testing that can only be delivered through laboratory-based platforms such as real-time simulators, integrated substation automation infrastructure and fl exible, inverter-equipped testing microgrids. To this end, the combination of fl exible network operation and new DER technologies underlines the importance of utilising the laboratory testing facilities available within the DERlab Network of Excellence. This not only informs the shaping of new protection testing and network integration practices by end users but also enables the process of de-risking new DER protection technologies. In order to support the issues discussed in the white paper, a comparative case study between UK and German DER protection and scheme testing practices is presented. This also highlights the level of complexity associated with standardisation and approval mechanisms adopted by different countries

Generation of realistic scenarios for multi-agent simulation of electricity markets

Most market operators provide daily data on several market processes, including the results of all market transactions. The use of such data by electricity market simulators is essential for simulations quality, enabling the modelling of market behaviour in a much more realistic and efficient way. RealScen (Realistic Scenarios Generator) is a tool that creates realistic scenarios according to the purpose of the simulation: representing reality as it is, or on a smaller scale but still as representative as possible. This paper presents a novel methodology that enables RealScen to collect real electricity markets information and using it to represent market participants, as well as modelling their characteristics and behaviours. This is done using data analysis combined with artificial intelligence. This paper analyses the way players' characteristics are modelled, particularly in their representation in a smaller scale, simplifying the simulation while maintaining the quality of results. A study is also conducted, comparing real electricity market values with the market results achieved using the generated scenarios. The conducted study shows that the scenarios can fully represent the reality, or approximate it through a reduced number of representative software agents. As a result, the proposed methodology enables RealScen to represent markets behaviour, allowing the study and understanding of the interactions between market entities, and the study of new markets by assuring the realism of simulations.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Stability improvement of a transmission grid with high share of renewable energy using TSCOPF and inertia emulation

This paper proposes a Transient Stability Constrained Optimal Power Flow (TSCOPF) formulation that models non-synchronous renewable generation equipped with synthetic inertia. The proposed optimization problem calculates the optimal operating point of the system, accommodating high shares of non-synchronous renewable generation while ensuring transient stability in the event of critical incidents. Synthetic inertia controllers are used to improve the dynamic stability of the system in cases of very high share of renewable generation. The proposed tool is tested in the North-West Spanish system, a network with a high penetration of wind energy that causes a reduction in the total system inertia. The results of the study show that 1) synthetic inertia in renewable power plants can diminish electromechanical oscillations after a severe contingency, reducing the cost of ensuring transient stability; 2) using synthetic inertia the system becomes more stable when conventional generation is decommissioned following de-carbonization and renewable promotion policies; and 3) the proposed model can be used to calculate the parameters of the synthetic inertia control.This work was supported by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation (ref. PID2019-104449RB-I00) within the 'Plan Estatal de Investigación Científica y Técnica y de Innovación 2017/2020'