Project Background
Owing to increased penetration of renewable energy resources, rapid load growth, and the energy market reform taking place in the power system, many interconnected grids are approaching their safe operating limits. As a result, local disturbances might result in wide-area blackouts causing large social and economic losses.
Phasor Measurement Units have confirmed these local disturbances to propagate through the grid in a wave-like fashion. This phenomenon has been named “electromechanical wave propagation”. Understanding it could permit new developments in protection and control of power system frequency transients.
The ability to predict the frequency disturbance behavior in order to advert failures and design protection and control schemes would greatly increase the resiliency of the electrical power grid.
Scientific Opportunities
There are few models available that can characterize the electromechanical wave phenomenon in large-scale transmission systems. One notable attempt is the continuum electromechanical dynamic model which generalizes the classical phasor transient stability model and allows for the characterization of the spatiotemporal propagation of electromechanical waves produced by faults and other types of disturbances. A continuum model like this can provide a macro-scale or “birds-eye” understanding of the power system electromechanical frequency which can be used to find grid weak spots and design appropriate protection schemes. Despite the promising idea of the continuum electromechanical dynamic model, not much research has been produced in this area, particularly due to its complexity and computational burden. There is an opportunity for universities and national laboratories to partner and harness high performance computing architectures to make these models a reality.
Research Goal
The objective of this project is to develop a computationally efficient model to capture wide-area power system wave propagations and propose mitigation strategies/controls to prevent system cascading failures. The developed tools could assist system operators in gaining better situational awareness, detecting hidden vulnerabilities of the system that may not be available in the widely used time-domain simulations, making more appropriate operational plans, and taking more effective emergency controls. Overall, this research will improve the North American power grid reliability and resilience.
Research Plan
We will simulate interconnection-sized electrical networks with the continuum model by leveraging Argonne’s expertise in computational mathematics and high-performance computing. The continuum model is based on hyperbolic Partial Differential Equations (PDEs). We are developing methods to integrate these PDEs with enough accuracy to represent correctly the disturbance dynamics as well as provide a solution in a reasonable time. In our strategy, we bring forward PETSc, a library developed at ANL, which is specialized in the solution of large-scale, sparse PDEs and large-scale computations done on supercomputers. This model will be validated using detailed, slower RTDS models. With the validated MACRO model, the disturbance energy dissipation and its relationship with the grid inertia, the generator reactance, the bus voltage and the disturbance source frequency will be investigated. This allows us to have a deep understanding of the disturbance attenuation process and the design of load modulation, DERs and HVDC controls, etc., to enhance the disturbance attenuation, preventing the cascading failures.
Deliverables and Impacts
Deliverables:
1.- A parallel computation-based tool for the continuum model.
2.- Continuum model validation using detailed simulators.
3.- Design of distributed controllers using electromechanical wave understanding.
Presentations:
[1] D. Huang, H. Liu, J. B. Zhao, T. Bi, Q. Yang, “A Novel Non-Uniform Frame Structure Model for Power System Disturbance Propagation Analysis” IEEE Trans. Power Systems, 2021.
[2] S. Lei, D.A. Maldonado, E.M. Constantinescu, J. Zhao, S. Yarahmadi, L. Mili, M. Anitescu, “A Novel Continuum Approximation to Power System Electromechanical Dynamics” Submitted to ISGT 2022.
Team and contact
Argonne National Laboratory (Lead)
Virginia Tech
Mississippi State University
People:
Dr. Mihai Anitescu (ANL, lead PI)
Dr. Lamine Mili (VTech, co-PI)
Dr. Junbo Zhao (MSU, co-PI)
Dr. Emil M. Constantinescu (ANL)
Dr. D. Adrian Maldonado (ANL)
Somayeh Yarahmadi (VTech)