Power system security enhancement by HVDC links using a closed-loop emergency control

In recent years, guaranteeing that large-scale interconnected systems operate safely, stably and economically has become a major and emergency issue. A number of high profile blackouts caused by cascading outages have focused attention on this issue. Embedded HVDC (High Voltage Direct Current) links within a larger AC power system are known to act as a “firewall” against cascading disturbances and therefore, can effectively contribute in preventing blackouts. A good example is the 2003 blackout in USA and Canada, where the Québec grid was not affected due to its HVDC interconnection. In the literature, many works have studied the impact of HVDC on the power system stability, but very few examples exist in the area of its impact on the system security. This paper presents a control strategy for HVDC systems to increase their contribution to system security. A real-time closed-loop control scheme is used to modulate the DC power of HVDC links to alleviate AC system overloads and improve system security. Simulations carried out on a simplified model of the Hydro-Québec network show that the proposed method works well and can greatly improve system security during emergency situations.Peer reviewedFinal Accepted Versio

Reliability Enhancements for Real-Time Operations of Electric Power Systems

abstract: The flexibility in power system networks is not fully modeled in existing real-time contingency analysis (RTCA) and real-time security-constrained economic dispatch (RT SCED) applications. Thus, corrective transmission switching (CTS) is proposed in this dissertation to enable RTCA and RT SCED to take advantage of the flexibility in the transmission system in a practical way. RTCA is first conducted to identify critical contingencies that may cause violations. Then, for each critical contingency, CTS is performed to determine the beneficial switching actions that can reduce post-contingency violations. To reduce computational burden, fast heuristic algorithms are proposed to generate candidate switching lists. Numerical simulations performed on three large-scale realistic power systems (TVA, ERCOT, and PJM) demonstrate that CTS can significantly reduce post-contingency violations. Parallel computing can further reduce the solution time. RT SCED is to eliminate the actual overloads and potential post-contingency overloads identified by RTCA. Procedure-A, which is consistent with existing industry practices, is proposed to connect RTCA and RT SCED. As CTS can reduce post-contingency violations, higher branch limits, referred to as pseudo limits, may be available for some contingency-case network constraints. Thus, Procedure-B is proposed to take advantage of the reliability benefits provided by CTS. With the proposed Procedure-B, CTS can be modeled in RT SCED implicitly through the proposed pseudo limits for contingency-case network constraints, which requires no change to existing RT SCED tools. Numerical simulations demonstrate that the proposed Procedure-A can effectively eliminate the flow violations reported by RTCA and that the proposed Procedure-B can reduce most of the congestion cost with consideration of CTS. The system status may be inaccurately estimated due to false data injection (FDI) cyber-attacks, which may mislead operators to adjust the system improperly and cause network violations. Thus, a two-stage FDI detection (FDID) approach, along with several metrics and an alert system, is proposed in this dissertation to detect FDI attacks. The first stage is to determine whether the system is under attack and the second stage would identify the target branch. Numerical simulations demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed two-stage FDID approach.Dissertation/ThesisDoctoral Dissertation Electrical Engineering 201

Shift factor-based SCOPF topology control MIP formulations with substation configurations

Topology control (TC) is an effective tool for managing congestion, contingency events, and overload control. The majority of TC research has focused on line and transformer switching. Substation reconfiguration is an additional TC action, which consists of opening or closing breakers not in series with lines or transformers. Some reconfiguration actions can be simpler to implement than branch opening, seen as a less invasive action. This paper introduces two formulations that incorporate substation reconfiguration with branch opening in a unified TC framework. The first method starts from a topology with all candidate breakers open, and breaker closing is emulated and optimized using virtual transactions. The second method takes the opposite approach, starting from a fully closed topology and optimizing breaker openings. We provide a theoretical framework for both methods and formulate security-constrained shift factor MIP TC formulations that incorporate both breaker and branch switching. By maintaining the shift factor formulation, we take advantage of its compactness, especially in the context of contingency constraints, and by focusing on reconfiguring substations, we hope to provide system operators additional flexibility in their TC decision processes. Simulation results on a subarea of PJM illustrate the application of the two formulations to realistic systems.The work was supported in part by the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy, U.S. Department of Energy, under Grant DE-AR0000223 and in part by the U.S. National Science Foundation Emerging Frontiers in Research and Innovation under Grant 1038230. Paper no. TPWRS-01497-2015. (DE-AR0000223 - Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy, U.S. Department of Energy; 1038230 - U.S. National Science Foundation Emerging Frontiers in Research and Innovation)http://buprimo.hosted.exlibrisgroup.com/primo_library/libweb/action/openurl?date=2017&issue=2&isSerivcesPage=true&spage=1179&dscnt=2&url_ctx_fmt=null&vid=BU&volume=32&institution=bosu&issn=0885-8950&id=doi:10.1109/TPWRS.2016.2574324&dstmp=1522778516872&fromLogin=truePublished versio

Active congestion quantification and reliability improvement considering aging failure in modern distribution networks

The enormous concerns of climate change and traditional resource crises lead to the increased use of distributed generations (DGs) and electric vehicles (EVs) in distribution networks. This leads to significant challenges in maintaining safe and reliable network operations due to the complexity and uncertainties in active distribution networks, e.g., congestion and reliability problems. Effective congestion management (CM) policies require appropriate indices to quantify the seriousness and customer contributions to congested areas. Developing an accurate model to identify the residual life of aged equipment is also essential in long-term CM procedures. The assessment of network reliability and equipment end-of-life failure also plays a critical role in network planning and regulation. The main contributions of this thesis include a) outlining the specific characteristics of congestion events and introducing the typical metrics to assess the effectiveness of CM approaches; b) proposing spatial, temporal and aggregate indices for rapidly recognizing the seriousness of congestion in terms of thermal and voltage violations, and proposing indices for quantifying the customer contributions to congested areas; c) proposing an improved method to estimate the end-of-life failure probabilities of transformers and cables lines taking real-time relative aging speed and loss-of-life into consideration; d) quantifying the impact of different levels of EV penetration on the network reliability considering end-of-life failure on equipment and post-fault network reconfiguration; and e) proposing an EV smart charging optimization model to improve network reliability and reduce the cost of customers and power utilities. Simulation results illustrate the feasibility of the proposed indices in rapidly recognizing the congestion level, geographic location, and customer contributions in balanced and unbalanced systems. Voltage congestion can be significantly relieved by network reconfiguration and the utilization of the proposed indices by utility operators in CM procedures is also explained. The numerical studies also verify that the improved Arrhenius-Weibull can better indicate the aging process and demonstrate the superior accuracy of the proposed method in identifying residual lives and end-of-life failure probabilities of transformers and conductors. The integration of EV has a great impact on equipment aging failure probability and loss-of-life, thus resulting in lower network reliability and higher cost for managing aging failure. Finally, the proposed piecewise linear optimization model of the EV smart charging framework can significantly improve network reliability by 90% and reduce the total cost by 83.8% for customers and power utilities

Electric Power System Operations with a Variable Series Reactor

Series FACTS devices, such as a Variable Series Reactor (VSR), have the ability to continuously regulate the transmission line reactance so as to control power ow. This research work evaluates the benefits brought by VSRs in different aspects of power system and develops efficient planning models and algorithms to provide optimal investment plan for the VSRs. First, an optimization approach capable of finding both optimal locations and settings of VSRs under a specific operating condition is developed. The tool implements a full ac model as well as detailed models for different power system components. Second, an optimization tool which can optimally allocate VSRs to improve the load margin in a transmission network considering a multi-scenario framework including base case and some critical contingencies is proposed. Starting from a mixed integer nonlinear programming (MINLP) model, a reformulation technique is leveraged to transform the MINLP model into a mixed integer linear programming (MILP) model so that it is computationally tractable for large scale power systems. Detailed numerical simulations on the practical Northwest US power network demonstrate the proposed technique and the capability of VSRs. Third, the VSR is introduced in the Transmission Expansion Planning (TEP) problem. A security constrained multi-stage TEP with the VSR is formulated as an MILP model. To reduce the computational burden for a practical large scale system, a decomposition approach is proposed. Simulation results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed approach and show that the appropriately allocated VSRs allow reduced planning costs. Fourth, in order to investigate the economic benefits brought by VSR in contingencies, a planning model to allocate VSR considering different operating conditions and the N - 1 contingencies is formulated. We consider a single target year planning. Three distinct load patterns which represent peak, normal and low load level are selected to accommodate the yearly load profile. The transmission contingencies can occur in any of the three load conditions. A two phase Benders decomposition is proposed to solved the large scale MILP model. Simulation results on the IEEE-118 bus system and the practical Polish system establish the efficient performance of the proposed algorithm

Dependent Failures And Failure Propagation In Electric Power Systems

Tez (Yüksek Lisans) -- İstanbul Teknik Üniversitesi, Fen Bilimleri Enstitüsü, 2013Thesis (M.Sc.) -- İstanbul Technical University, Institute of Science and Technology, 2013Biz toplam kesinti sayısı dağılımını, cascading sürecinden sonra dallanma yöntemi ve yayılma ortalamasına göre tahmin ettikAn initial number of lines outaged can lead to a cascading propagation of further outages. We estimate the amount by which line outages propagate from standard utility data that is reported to TEİAŞ. We estimate the distribution of the total number of outages after cascading from the amount of propagation and a probabilistic branching process model of the cascading.Yüksek LisansM.Sc