The creation of synthetic power grids: preliminary considerations

This thesis presents preliminary considerations and an initial methodology for the systematic creation of synthetic power system test cases. The synthesized grids are built to match statistical characteristics found in actual power grids, but they do not correspond to any real grid and are thus free from confidentiality requirements. First, substations are geographically placed on a selected territory, synthesized from public information about the underlying population and generation plants. A clustering technique is employed, which ensures the synthetic substations meet realistic proportions of load and generation, among other constraints. Next, a network of transmission lines is added. This thesis describes several structural statistics to be used in characterizing real power system networks, including connectivity, Delaunay triangulation overlap, dc power flow analysis, and line intersection rate. The thesis presents a methodology to generate synthetic line topologies with realistic parameters which satisfy these criteria. Then, the test cases can be augmented with additional complexities to build large, realistic cases. An application to geomagnetic disturbance analysis is discussed as an example. The thesis illustrates the method with two example test cases, one with 150 buses and the other with 2000 buses. The methodology for creating each is shown, and the characteristics of these cases are validated against the observations from real cases

Application of Large-Scale Synthetic Power System Models for Energy Economic Studies

Due to information confidentiality issues, there is limited access to actual power system models that represent features of actual power grids for teaching, training, and research purposes. The authors\u27 previous work describes the process of creating synthetic transmission networks, with statistics similar to those of actual power grids. Thus, this paper outlines a systematic methodology to augment the synthetic network base case for energy economic studies. The key step is to determine generator cost models by fuel type and capacity. Based on statistics summarized from the actual grids, two approaches are proposed to assign coefficients to generator cost models. To illustrate the proposed creation procedure, we describe the construction of a synthetic model for Electric Reliability Council of Texas footprint. Simulation results are presented to verify that the created test system is able to represent the behavior of actual power systems

Inertia Adequacy in Transient Stability Models for Synthetic Electric Grids

If a disturbance rocks a low-inertia power system, the frequency decline may be too rapid to arrest before it triggers undesirable responses from generators and loads. In the worst case, this instability could lead to blackout and major equipment damage. Electric utilities, to combat this, study inertia adequacy in systems that are particularly vulnerable. This process, involving detailed transient simulations, usually leads to a notion of a system-wide inertia floor. Ongoing questions in this analysis are in how to set the inertial floor and to what extent the location of frequency control resources matters. This paper proposes a new analysis technique that quantifies theoretical locational rate of change of frequency (ROCOF) as a computationally efficient screening algorithm scalable to large systems. An additional challenge in moving this area forward is the lack of high-quality, public benchmark dynamics cases. This paper presents a synthetic case for such purposes and a methodology for validation, to ensure that it is well suited to inertia adequacy studies to improve electric grid performance.Comment: In proceedings of the 11th Bulk Power Systems Dynamics and Control Symposium (IREP 2022), July 25-30, 2022, Banff, Canad

Building Synthetic Power Transmission Networks of Many Voltage Levels, Spanning Multiple Areas

Synthetic power grids, that is, test cases designed to match realistic structural and statistical characteristics of actual grids, are useful for research, development, and demonstration of innovations, since the cases are fictitious and thus free from data confidentiality issues. Building on previous work, this paper addresses a couple of related problems in the transmission network synthesis process. These issues appear as created cases become larger and involve multiple areas and overlapping nominal voltage levels. A fast, scalable hierarchical clustering is designed to assign voltage levels to substations considering the needs of the system, the specific constraints of the area, and smooth interconnections between neighboring areas with different voltage levels. A line topology generation framework is considered that is appropriate for many networks of different voltage levels, constructed together for a useful, realistic grid. These methods are demonstrated in a new 2000 bus test case, validated and publicly released