Power Losses Estimation in Low Voltage Smart Grids

Mención Internacional en el título de doctorOne of the European Union Targets was to replace at least 80% of all traditional energy meters with electronic smart meters by 2020. However, by the end of 2020, the European region (EU 27 including the UK) had installed no more than 150 million smart electricity meters, representing a penetration rate of 50% for smart meters. By 2026, It is expected that there will be more than 227 million smart meters in households due to the updated planning and target numbers, which will affect many European markets, including western and northern Europe. This scenario would contribute to the general purpose of building a more sustainable distribution system for the future. This thesis contributes to the field of power losses estimation and optimization in low-voltage (LV) smart grids in large-scale distribution areas. To contextualize the importance of the research, it has been necessary to explain the unbalanced nature of low voltage distribution networks where there is a huge deployment of smart meter rollout, and there is also uncertainty related to renewable energy generation. Main results of the thesis have been applied in two smart grid research projects: the national project OSIRIS (Optimizaci´on de la Supervisi´on Inteligente de la Red de Distribuci´on) and the European project IDE4L (Ideal Grid For All ). Smart metering infrastructure allows distributor system operators (DSOs) to have detailed information about the customers energy consumption or generation. Smart meters measure the active and reactive energy consumption/generation of customers using different discrete time resolutions which range from 15-60 min. A large-scale smart meter rollout allows service providers to gain information about the energy consumed and produced by each customer in near-real time. This knowledge can be used to compute the aggregated network power losses at any given time. In this case, network power losses are calculated by means of customers’ smart meters measurements, in terms of both active and reactive energy consumption, and by the energy measured by the smart meter supervisor located at the secondary substation (SS). The problem of network losses estimation becomes more challenging as a results of the existence of not-technical losses due to electricity fraud or smart meter measurements anomalous (null or extremely high) or even because there are customers’ smart meters that can be out of service. One of the differential keys of LV smart grids is the presence of single-phase loads and unbalanced operation, which makes it necessary to adopt a complete three-phase model of the LV distribution network to calculate the real value of the power losses. This scenario makes the process of power loss estimation a computationally intensive problem. The challenge is even greater when estimating the power losses of large-scale distribution networks, composed of thousands of SSs. In recent years, environmental concerns have led to the increasing integration of a considerable number of distributed energy resources (DERs) into LV smart grids. This fact prompts DSOs and regulators to provide the maximum energy efficiency in their networks (i.e., the smallest power loss values) and maximum sustainable energy consumption. Detailed understanding of the network’s behavior in terms of power losses and the use of electricity is necessary to achieve this energy efficiency. However, the above scenario presents some drawbacks. The integration of DERs units, such as photovoltaic (PV) panels, into distribution networks can produce an increment of network power losses if the DERs units are not optimally located, coordinated, or controlled. Additionally, the network can experience technical contingencies such as cable’s overloads and nodal over-voltages or can lead to an inefficient system operation due to high energy losses or cables that exceed thermal limits. Moreover, there is a great uncertainty associated with the distributed power generation from PVs because its energy generation depend on weather conditions, including ambient temperature and solar irradiance, which are highly intermittent and fluctuating. Uncertainty is also present in some loads with stochastic behavior, such as plug-in electric vehicles (PEV), which adds an uncertainty layer and makes their optimal integration more complex. Therefore, DSOs require advanced methods to estimate power losses in unbalanced large-scale LV smart grids under uncertain situations. Such estimations would facilitate the deployment of policies and practices that lead to a safe and efficient integration of DERs in the form of flexibility mechanisms. In this context, flexibility mechanisms are essential to achieve optimal operation conditions under extreme uncertainty. Flexibility mechanisms can be deployed to tackle the imbalance between generation and demand that results from the uncertainty that is latent in LV smart grids. These flexibility mechanisms are based on modifying the normal power consumption (for the demand side) or power generation (for the generation side), according to a flexibility scheduling at the request of the network operator. In summary, DSOs face the challenge of managing network losses over large geographical areas where there are hundreds of secondary substations and thousands of feeders, with multiple customers and an ever-increasing presence of renewable DERs. Power losses estimation is thus paramount to improve network energy efficiency in the context of the European Union energy policies. This situation is complicated by the unbalanced operation of those networks and the presence of uncertainty. To address these challenges, this thesis focuses on the following objectives: 1. Power losses estimation in unbalanced LV smart grids under uncertainty. 2. Power losses estimation in unbalanced LV smart grids in large areas with a presence of DERs. 3. Flexibility scheduling for power losses minimization in unbalanced smart grids under uncertainty. The mentioned objectives are achieved by taking advantage of smart metering infrastructures, machine and deep learning models and mathematical programming techniques which allows DSOs to reduce their total power losses within the distribution network. This approach entails using flexibility mechanisms to operate the distribution network optimally and enhance the load management and DG expansion planning. According to the objectives identified earlier, the main contributions of this thesis are the following: 1. Power losses estimation in unbalanced LV smart grids under uncertainty conditions. An optimization-based procedure to estimate load consumption of non-telemetered customers. A Markov chain-based process to estimate intra-hour load demand for data having a low resolution and for non-telemetered customers or customers which smart meters provide incorrect measurements. 2. Power losses estimation in unbalanced LV smart grids in large-scale areas with a presence of DERs. A data mining approach to reduce a high-dimensionality dataset in smart grids to yield a reduced set of relevant features. A clustering process to obtain representative feeders within a large-scale distribution area of smart grids. A deep learning-based power losses estimator for large-scale LV smart grids. The method is formulated as a deep neural network that uses as input features the power load demand and power generation of a set of representative feeders. The model gives, as output, the power losses of the whole area. 3. Flexibility scheduling for power losses minimization in unbalanced smart grids under uncertainty. A robust optimization model for the flexibility scheduling optimization model for unbalanced smart grids with distributed resources, such as PV panels and PEV devices.Programa de Doctorado en Ingeniería Eléctrica, Electrónica y Automática por la Universidad Carlos III de MadridPresidenta: Natalia Alguacil Conde.- Secretario: Pablo Ledesma Larrea.- Vocal: Samuele Grill

Distributed Random Convex Programming via Constraints Consensus

This paper discusses distributed approaches for the solution of random convex programs (RCP). RCPs are convex optimization problems with a (usually large) number N of randomly extracted constraints; they arise in several applicative areas, especially in the context of decision under uncertainty, see [2],[3]. We here consider a setup in which instances of the random constraints (the scenario) are not held by a single centralized processing unit, but are distributed among different nodes of a network. Each node "sees" only a small subset of the constraints, and may communicate with neighbors. The objective is to make all nodes converge to the same solution as the centralized RCP problem. To this end, we develop two distributed algorithms that are variants of the constraints consensus algorithm [4],[5]: the active constraints consensus (ACC) algorithm, and the vertex constraints consensus (VCC) algorithm. We show that the ACC algorithm computes the overall optimal solution in finite time, and with almost surely bounded communication at each iteration. The VCC algorithm is instead tailored for the special case in which the constraint functions are convex also w.r.t. the uncertain parameters, and it computes the solution in a number of iterations bounded by the diameter of the communication graph. We further devise a variant of the VCC algorithm, namely quantized vertex constraints consensus (qVCC), to cope with the case in which communication bandwidth among processors is bounded. We discuss several applications of the proposed distributed techniques, including estimation, classification, and random model predictive control, and we present a numerical analysis of the performance of the proposed methods. As a complementary numerical result, we show that the parallel computation of the scenario solution using ACC algorithm significantly outperforms its centralized equivalent

Geometric Interpretation of Theoretical Bounds for RSS-based Source Localization with Uncertain Anchor Positions

The Received Signal Strength based source localization can encounter severe problems originating from uncertain information about the anchor positions in practice. The anchor positions, although commonly assumed to be precisely known prior to the source localization, are usually obtained using previous estimation algorithm such as GPS. This previous estimation procedure produces anchor positions with limited accuracy that result in degradations of the source localization algorithm and topology uncertainty. We have recently addressed the problem with a joint estimation framework that jointly estimates the unknown source and uncertain anchors positions and derived the theoretical limits of the framework. This paper extends the authors previous work on the theoretical performance bounds of the joint localization framework with appropriate geometric interpretation of the overall problem exploiting the properties of semi-definiteness and symmetry of the Fisher Information Matrix and the Cram{\`e}r-Rao Lower Bound and using Information and Error Ellipses, respectively. The numerical results aim to illustrate and discuss the usefulness of the geometric interpretation. They provide in-depth insight into the geometrical properties of the joint localization problem underlining the various possibilities for practical design of efficient localization algorithms.Comment: 30 pages, 15 figure

Distributed Adaptive Fault-Tolerant Control of Uncertain Multi-Agent Systems

This paper presents an adaptive fault-tolerant control (FTC) scheme for a class of nonlinear uncertain multi-agent systems. A local FTC scheme is designed for each agent using local measurements and suitable information exchanged between neighboring agents. Each local FTC scheme consists of a fault diagnosis module and a reconfigurable controller module comprised of a baseline controller and two adaptive fault-tolerant controllers activated after fault detection and after fault isolation, respectively. Under certain assumptions, the closed-loop system's stability and leader-follower consensus properties are rigorously established under different modes of the FTC system, including the time-period before possible fault detection, between fault detection and possible isolation, and after fault isolation

Uncertainty modelling in power system state estimation

A method for uncertainty analysis in power system state estimation is proposed. The two-step method uses static weighted least-squares analysis to compute 'point' state estimates. Linear programming is then employed to obtain the upper and lower bounds of the uncertainty interval. It is shown that the method can provide useful additional information for both metered and nonmetered elements of the system. The effects of network parameter errors are also studied. For illustrative purposed, the proposed method is tested using the six-bus and IEEE 30-bus standard systems. Results show that the proposed method is an accurate and reliable tool for estimating the uncertainty bounds in power system state estimation

Measurement network design including traveltime determinations to minimize model prediction uncertainty

Traveltime determinations have found increasing application in the characterization of groundwater systems. No algorithms are available, however, to optimally design sampling strategies including this information type. We propose a first-order methodology to include groundwater age or tracer arrival time determinations in measurement network design and apply the methodology in an illustrative example in which the network design is directed at contaminant breakthrough uncertainty minimization. We calculate linearized covariances between potential measurements and the goal variables of which we want to reduce the uncertainty: the groundwater age at the control plane and the breakthrough locations of the contaminant. We assume the traveltime to be lognormally distributed and therefore logtransform the age determinations in compliance with the adopted Bayesian framework. Accordingly, we derive expressions for the linearized covariances between the transformed age determinations and the parameters and states. In our synthetic numerical example, the derived expressions are shown to provide good first-order predictions of the variance of the natural logarithm of groundwater age if the variance of the natural logarithm of the conductivity is less than 3.0. The calculated covariances can be used to predict the posterior breakthrough variance belonging to a candidate network before samples are taken. A Genetic Algorithm is used to efficiently search, among all candidate networks, for a near-optimal one. We show that, in our numerical example, an age estimation network outperforms (in terms of breakthrough uncertainty reduction) equally sized head measurement networks and conductivity measurement networks even if the age estimations are highly uncertain