Performance Evaluation of Communication Technologies and Network Structure for Smart Grid Applications

The design of an effective and reliable communication network supporting smart grid applications requires the selection of appropriate communication technologies and protocols. The objective of this study is to study and quantify the capabilities of an advanced metring infrastructure (AMI) to support the simultaneous operation of major smart grid functions. These include smart metring, price-induced controls, distribution automation, demand response, and electric vehicle charging/discharging applications in terms of throughput and latency. OPNET is used to simulate the performance of selected communication technologies and protocols. Research findings indicate that smart grid applications can operate simultaneously by piggybacking on an existing AMI infrastructure and still achieve their latency requirements

Trends and challenges in smart metering analytics

With strong policy support globally, it is expected that the total amount of smart energy meters installed worldwide will reach 780 million by 2020, including 200 million in the EU and 30 Million in the UK alone. Smart metering can improve grid operation and maintenance of distribution networks through load forecasting, improve demand response measures, and enhance end-user experience through accurate billing and appliance-level energy feedback via Non-Intrusive Load Monitoring (NILM). In this paper, we review trends of smart metering applications and challenges in large-scale adoption, and provide case studies to demonstrate application of NILM for meaningful energy feedback

Analysis And Mitigation Of The Impacts Of Delays In Control Of Power Systems With Renewable Energy Sources

ABSTRACT Analysis and Mitigation of the Impacts of Delays in Control of Power Systems with Renewable Energy Sources by Chang Fu Apr. 2019 Advisor : Dr. Caisheng Wang Major : Electrical and Computer Engineering Degree : Doctor of Philosophy With the integration of renewable resources, electric vehicles and other uncertain resources into power grid, varieties of control topology and algorithms have been proposed to increase the stability and reliability of the operation system. Load modeling is an critical part in such analysis since it significantly impacts the accuracy of the simulation in power system, as well as stability and reliability analysis. Traditional power system composite load model parameter identification problems can be essentially ascribed to optimization problems, and the identied parameters are point estimations subject to dierent constraints. These conventional point estimation based composite load modeling approaches suer from disturbances and noises and provide limited information of the system dynamics. In this thesis, a statistic (Bayesian Estimation) based distribution estimation approach is proposed for composite load models, including static (ZIP) and dynamic (Induction Motor) parts, by implementing Gibbs sampling. The proposed method provides a distribution estimation of coecients for load models and is robust to measurement errors. The overvoltage issue is another urgent issues need to be addressed, especially in a high PV penetration level system. Various approaches including the real power control through photovoltaic (PV) inverters have been proposed to mitigate such impact, however, most of the existing methods did not include communication delays in the control loop. Communication delays, short or long, are inevitable in the PV voltage regulation loop and can not only deteriorate the system performance with undesired voltage quality but also cause system instability. In this thesis, a method is presented to convert the overvoltage control problem via PV inverters for multiple PVs into a problem of single-input-single-output (SISO) systems. The method can handle multiple PVs and dierent communication delays. The impact of communication delays is also systematically analyzed and the maximum tolerable delay is rigorously obtained. Dierent from linear matrix inequality (LMI) techniques that have been extensively studied in handling systems with communication delays, the proposed method gives the necessary and sucient condition for obtaining a controller and the design procedure is explicitly and constructively given in the paper. The effectiveness of the proposed method is veried by simulation studies on a distribution feeder and the widely-used 33-bus distribution test system. The similar design strategy can be utilized to mitigate delay impacts in Load frequency control (LFC) as well. LFC has been considered as one of the most important frequency regulation mechanisms in modern power system. One of the inevitable problems involved in LFC over a wide area is communication delay. In this thesis, an alternative design method is proposed to devise delay compensators for LFC in one or multiple control areas. For one-area LFC, a sucient and necessary condition is given for designing a delay compensator. For multiarea LFC with area control errors (ACEs), it is demonstrated that each control area can have its delay controller designed as that in a one-area system if the index of coupling among the areas is below the threshold value determined by the small gain theorem. Effectiveness of the proposed method is veried by simulation studies on LFCs with communication delays in one and multiple interconnected areas with and without time-varying delays, respectively