Communication-based load allocation and restoration to improve efficiency and resilience in smart grids integrated with renewables and electric vehicles

Theoretical thesis.Bibliography: pages 113-130.1. Introduction -- 2. Literature review -- 3. MQTT-Based load allocation for grid demand reduction in smart neighborhoods considering unreliable communication links -- 4. Load restoration planning to improve resilience in power distribution networks: a multi-objective decision support -- 5. Enhancing power grid resilience through an IEC61850-based EV-assisted load restoration -- 6. Conclusion and future work -- References -- Appendix: Miscellaneous applications of the proposed IOT platform in Chapter 3.Recent developments in the area of advanced information and communication technologies offer provisions to power utilities to run an elegant load allocation and restoration in smart grids. Communication-enhanced platforms enable higher situational awareness with more grid components getting actively involved in load allocation and restoration, which results in higher network flexibilities and lower grid demand. For instance, multi-functional Electric Vehicle (EV) chargers, in aggregated level, can enable new ancillary services for operators to use (e.g. EV-assisted Volt-Var Control (VVC)). In addition, service restoration after a High-Impact Low-Probability (HILP) event in the grid could be improved by modern grid components, such as EVs and Distributed Energy Resources (DERs), to be dispatched during the restoration. This results in higher restoration rapidity and robustness in future grids. Communication-based load allocation and restoration can improve various phases of the power system behavior from planning (preventive activities in pre-event period) to operation (corrective activities in post-event time interval). This Ph.D. study encompasses chapters on both planning and operation stages. A resilience-oriented multi-objective decision-making framework has been designed in this work to plan for higher structural resilience in the grid subject to HILP events.Unlike the widely accepted standard metrics for reliability assessment in power distribution systems (e.g. system average interruption duration index (SAIDI), system average interruption frequency index (SAIFI), energy not supplied (ENS) etc.), a resilience index which quantifies resilience features such as preparedness, robustness, and restorative/disruptive rapidity is missing. A novel multi-dimensional resilience metric is proposed in this Ph.D.study to be adopted by power utilities to evaluate resilience of the grid and optimize the aforementioned characteristics of power system behavior. For operational resilience, a communication-based EV-assisted load restoration system is designed and implemented in this Ph.D. work. Unlike the past studies, the proposed solution harnesses (a) the imported power and flexibility from the neighboring networks, (b)Distributed Energy Resources (DERs), and (c) aggregated vehicle to grid (V2G) capacity in all steps of restoration when facing an extreme HILP incident with multiple faults. The proposed real-time SR mechanism is implemented using the RTDS Hardware In the Loop (HIL) platform and the contribution of each SR resource was numerically quantified by the developed resilience metric in previous chapter. The proposed solution ensures an enhanced feeder-level resourcefulness that can contribute to agile response and efficient recovery. This is primarily achieved by a strategic deployment of major modern resources (with focus on EVs contribution) during a sequence of multiple faults -- abstract.1 online resource (xx, 135 pages) illustration

A Framework for Evaluation of Power Grid Resilience Case Study: 2016 South Australian Blackout

Evaluation of a system resilience has a multidimensional nature that includes multifarious qualitative and quantitative aspects. This paper focuses on energy resilience in power systems and presents a novel quantitative metric, which aims to quantify the entire system behavior from pre-outage to post-outage stage. On September 28 2016, fierce tornado and lightning strikes caused multiple faults on the South Australian (SA) transmission system and led to a blackout in the entire state of South Australia. Load restoration data related to this event is collected from the Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO) and is considered as the case study in this work. The proposed metric is applied to the real-world restoration data related to this disruptive event to measure and evaluate energy resilience in the SA grid. Furthermore, the effectiveness of the proposed framework in energy-resilience optimization is shown by detailed resilience-oriented problem formulation in power grids

Internet of Things Platform for Energy Management in Multi-Microgrid System to Improve Neutral Current Compensation

In this paper, an Internet of Things (IoT) platform is proposed for Multi-Microgrid (MMG) system to improve unbalance compensation functionality employing three-phase four-leg (3P-4L) voltage source inverters (VSIs). The two level communication system connects the MMG system, implemented in Power System Computer Aided Design (PSCAD), to the cloud server. The local communication level utilizes Modbus Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) and Message Queuing Telemetry Transport (MQTT) is used as the protocol for global communication level. A communication operation algorithm is developed to manage the communication operation under various communication failure scenarios. To test the communication system, it is implemented on an experimental testbed to investigate its functionality for MMG neutral current compensation (NCC). To compensate the neutral current in MMG, a dynamic NCC algorithm is proposed, which enables the MGs to further improve the NCC by sharing their data using the IoT platform. The performance of the control and communication system using dynamic NCC is compared with the fixed capacity NCC for unbalance compensation under different communication failure conditions. The impact of the communication system performance on the NCC sharing is the focus of this research. The results show that the proposed system provides better neutral current compensation and phase balancing in case of MMG operation by sharing the data effectively even if the communication system is failing partially