Search Results (56)

Abnormal operations, such as faults occurring in an electrical power system (EPS), disrupt its balanced operation, posing potential hazards to human lives and the system’s equipment. Effective monitoring, control, protection, and coordination are essential to mitigate these risks. The complexity of these processes is further compounded by the presence of intermittent distributed energy resources (DERs) in active distribution networks (ADNs) with bidirectional power flow, which introduces a fast-changing dynamic aspect to the system. The deployment of phasor measurement units (PMUs) within the EPS as highly responsive equipment can play a pivotal role in addressing these challenges, enhancing the system’s resilience and reliability. However, synchrophasor measurement-based studies and analyses of power system phenomena may be hindered by the absence of PMU blocks in certain simulation tools, such as PSCAD, or by the existing PMU block in Matlab/Simulink R2021b, which exhibit technical limitations. These limitations include providing only the positive sequence component of the measurements and lacking information about individual phases, rendering them unsuitable for certain measurements, including unbalanced and non-symmetrical fault operations. This study proposes a new reliable PMU model in Matlab and tests it under normal and abnormal conditions, applying real-time simulation and controller-hardware-in-the-loop (CHIL) techniques. Full article

The growing complexity and uncertainty in modern power systems—driven by increased integration of renewable energy sources and variable loads—underscore the need for robust tools to assess dynamic stability. This paper presents an enhanced methodology for modal analysis that combines Adaptive Variational Mode Decomposition (A-VMD) with Prony’s method. A novel energy-based selection mechanism is introduced to determine the optimal number of intrinsic mode functions (IMFs), improving the decomposition’s adaptability and precision. The resulting modes are analyzed to estimate modal frequencies and damping ratios. Validation is conducted using both synthetic datasets and real synchrophasor measurements from Ecuador’s national power grid under ambient and disturbed operating conditions. The proposed approach is benchmarked against established techniques, including a matrix pencil, conventional VMD-Prony, and commercial tools such as WAProtector and DIgSILENT PowerFactory. The results demonstrate that A-VMD consistently delivers more accurate and robust performance, especially for low signal-to-noise ratios and low-energy ambient conditions. These findings highlight the method’s potential for real-time oscillation mode identification and small-signal stability monitoring in wide-area power systems. Full article

To ensure the reliability and security of Colombia’s national power system, there is an ongoing necessity for upgrades in monitoring and protection mechanisms. Approximately sixteen years ago, the introduction of synchrophasor measurements enabled the swift detection of potentially network-detrimental events. Subsequent advancements have seen the deployment of Phasor Measurement Units (PMUs), currently tallying 150 across 25 substations, facilitating real-time monitoring and analysis. The growth of the PMU network is pivotal for the modernization of the National Control Center, particularly in the face of complexities introduced by renewable energy sources. There is an increasing demand for data analytics platforms to support operators in responding to threats. This paper explores the development of the Colombian Wide-Area Measurement System (WAMS) network, highlighting its milestones and advancements. Significant contributions include the technological evolution of the WAMS for real-time monitoring, an innovative high-speed data analytics strategy, and tools for the monitoring of frequency, rate of change of frequency (RoCoF), angular differences, oscillations, and voltage recovery, alongside industry-specific criteria for real-time assessment. Implemented within an operational WAMS, these tools enhance situational awareness, thereby assisting operators in decision-making and augmenting the power system’s reliability, security, and efficiency, underscoring their significance in modernization and sustainability initiatives. Full article

The evolution of phasor measurement units (PMUs) marked a significant development in the field of electrical engineering. The integration of PMU-based linear state estimators or the augmentation of SCADA measurements with PMU measurements has emerged as a promising solution to address the limitations of conventional state estimation. The utilization of PMU measurements has been demonstrated to effectively address measurement errors, leading to the precise determination of the system’s state within a single iteration. This article provides a comprehensive discussion of both linear and nonlinear state estimation computational processes. A comparative analysis is conducted to assess their performance. PMU-based state estimator models are proposed based on different PMU locations and are further examined under abnormal conditions. The results are compared with the simulated results from a Simulink PSCAD model of the IEEE 14-bus system to ensure validation. The test results demonstrated that the proposed models outperformed the conventional model in terms of robustness and accuracy. The estimated and simulated states matched during both normal and abnormal conditions, demonstrating the model’s capability to track sudden changes in voltage profiles. This article promotes further investigations to develop new control and protection functions using this model. Full article

With the growing concern over climate change and energy security, the Government of India expedited enhancing the share of renewable energy (RE) derived from solar, wind and biomass sources within the energy blend. In this paper, a techno-economic and environmental analysis of a microgrid-integrated electric vehicle charging stations fueled by renewable energy is proposed for a typical area in the State of Karnataka, South India. The power transaction with the grid and the sell-back price to the national grid were investigated. Carbon emissions were also assessed, and 128,406 CO₂ kg/Yr can be saved in the grid-connected mode. Also, in this work, different scenarios such as injecting active power, reactive power, and active and reactive power, and injecting active and absorbing reactive power to the grid are comprehensively assessed. Out of four types, type 3 (inject real and reactive power) provides significant reduction in power losses by up to 80.99%. The synchrophasor-technology-based monitoring method is adopted in order to enhance the microgrid system’s overall performance. The execution times for different cases with distributed generators (DGs) and electric vehicle charging stations (EVCSs) for conventional systems and micro-phasor measurement units (µPMU) were observed to be 19.07 s and 5.64 s, respectively, which is well accepted in the case of online monitoring. Full article

Subsynchronous oscillation (SSO) is the resonance between a new energy generator set and a weak power grid, and the resonance frequency is usually the sub-/super-synchronous frequency. The eigensystem realization algorithm (ERA) is a classic algorithm for extracting modal parameters based on matrix decomposition. By leveraging the ERA’s simplicity and low computational cost, an enhanced methodology for identifying the key parameters of SSO is introduced. The enhanced algorithm realizes SSO angular frequency extraction by constructing an angular frequency fitting equation, enabling efficient identification of SSO parameters using only a 200 ms synchrophasor sequence. In the process of identification, the fitting-based ERA effectively addresses the limitation of the existing ERA. The accuracy of SSO parameter identification is improved, thereby realizing that SSO parameter identification can be carried out using a 200 ms data window. The fitting-based ERA is verified using synthetic and actual data from synchrophasor measurement terminals. The research results show that the proposed algorithm can accurately extract fundamental and subsynchronous or supersynchronous oscillation parameters, effectively realizing dynamic real-time monitoring of subsynchronous oscillations. Full article

The subsynchronous oscillation caused by the resonance between power electronic devices and series compensation devices or weak power grids introduced by large-scale renewable energy generation greatly reduces the transmission capacity of the system and may endanger the safe operation of the power system. It even leads to system oscillation instability. In this paper, based on the advantages of a simple solution, a small amount of calculation and anti-noise of ERA, a method of subsynchronous oscillation parameter identification based on the eigensystem realization algorithm (ERA) is proposed. The Hankel matrix in the improved ERA is obtained by splicing the real part matrix and the imaginary part matrix of the synchrophasor, thus solving the problem of angular frequency conjugate constraints of two fundamental components and two oscillatory components which are not considered in the existing ERA. The solution to this problem is helpful to improve the accurate parameter identification results of ERA under the data window of 200 ms and weaken the limitation caused by the assumption that the synchrophasor model is fixed. The practicability of the improved method based on PMU is verified by the synthesis of ERA and the actual measurement data. Compared with the existing ERA, the improved ERA can accurately identify the parameters of each component under the ultra-short data window and realize the dynamic monitoring of power system subsynchronous oscillation. Full article

State estimation (SE) is an important energy management system application for power system operations. Linear state estimation (LSE) is a variant of SE based on linear relationships between state variables and measurements. LSE estimates system state variables, including bus voltage magnitudes and angles in an electric power transmission network, using a network model derived from the topology processor and measurements. Phasor measurement units (PMUs) enable the implementation of LSE by providing synchronized high-speed measurements. However, as the size of the power system increases, the computational overhead of the state-of-the-art (SOTA) LSE grows exponentially, where the practical implementation of LSE is challenged. This paper presents a distributed linear state estimation (D-LSE) at the substation and area levels using a hierarchical transmission network topology processor (H-TNTP). The proposed substation-level and area-level D-LSE can efficiently and accurately estimate system state variables at the PMU rate, thus enhancing the estimation reliability and efficiency of modern power systems. Network-level LSE has been integrated with H-TNTP based on PMU measurements, thus enhancing the SOTA LSE and providing redundancy to substation-level and area-level D-LSE. The implementations of D-LSE and enhanced LSE have been investigated for two benchmark power systems, a modified two-area four-machine power system and the IEEE 68 bus power system, on a real-time digital simulator. The typical results indicate that the proposed multilevel D-LSE is efficient, resilient, and robust for topology changes, bad data, and noisy measurements compared to the SOTA LSE. Full article

Synchrophasor data contain a trove of information on the power system and its dynamics. These measurements have a high potential to unlock our ability to cope with changing system conditions and challenges posed by distributed and intermittent energy sources. While Phasor Measurement Units (PMUs) have seen a large deployment in the grid, their applications are limited by the software platforms that are deployed in control centers to monitor the grid. In this paper, we present an open source toolkit that enables fast prototyping of PMU applications. The toolkit is akin to a software development kit (SDK) for synchrophasor applications, providing a number of functionalities that enable high-level PMU application development within the LabVIEW environment. This Smart-grid Synchrophasor SDK (S3DK) proposes a paradigm based on the concept of distributed applications, which allows development and deployment to be independent of the existing software stack deployed in control centers and to leverage PMU data at any level of a synchrophasor system hierarchy. This paper serves to introduce the S3DK, which is released as open source software to facilitate broader and fast prototyping of synchrophasor applications. Full article

In this paper, a customizable low-cost voltage waveform generator based on a real-time desktop PC and embedded data acquisition card synchronized with Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) is presented. A software approach to phase-locked loop synchronization with an external Global Positioning System (GPS) pulse signal is utilized to achieve a time uncertainty of $\pm 1\mathsf{\mu }$s. This avoids expensive hardware modules for synchronization and timing purposes, which are commonly presented in literature. Besides the application for controlling the test platform, our own phasor data concentrator (PDC) application is running concurrently on the host PC. The latter is used for collecting and comparing the syncrophasor data from the test platform against the syncrophasor data measured by phasor measurement units (PMUs) under the test. The paper describes all procedures for generating reference test signals. Numerous case studies were performed, and experimental results for steady-state compliance as well as frequency ramp and phase modulation tests for dynamic compliance are presented in detail. All tests confirm that customizable test platform meets the requirements of IEEE/IEC standards. Compared to other calibrators, the cost as well as the specifications and point-by-point concept of data processing makes the described test platform suitable for performance analysis of PMU algorithms implemented on various development boards. Full article

Smart Grid 3.0 is the latest evolution of the smart grid and incorporates advanced computing and communication technologies. The synchrophasor communication system plays a critical role in wide-area measurement systems (WAMS) for real-time protection and control of power systems, supporting the objectives of Smart Grid 3.0. This system relies on synchrophasor communication technologies, where Phasor Measurement Units (PMUs) transmit synchrophasor data to Phasor Data Concentrators (PDCs) over the synchrophasor communication network. The communication infrastructure of this network is based on the TCP/IP protocol stack, which, unfortunately, is susceptible to cyberattacks, posing security threats such as data tampering and false data injection. These vulnerabilities undermine the intended benefits of synchrophasor applications in terms of situational awareness, observability, grid reliability, resiliency, and synchronized monitoring and control in the smart grid. To address these challenges, it is crucial to enhance the security, integrity, and confidentiality of synchrophasor data within the communication system. This paper proposes a blockchain-based synchrophasor communication system that preserves the security and integrity of synchrophasor data. In this paper, an architecture is proposed for a synchrophasor communication system based on blockchain technology. The proposed architecture aims to enhance the security and integrity of synchrophasor measurements. Furthermore, the architecture is developed as a peer-to-peer distributed blockchain network, leveraging the robustness of a distributed, decentralized, hierarchical PDC architecture. To evaluate the efficacy of the proposed architecture, two case studies, one using the IEEE 9 bus and the other using IEEE 14 bus systems are considered. Moreover, various challenges with potential solutions are also recommended. The proposed work is envisioned to contribute to the advancement of Smart Grid 3.0 by adopting blockchain technology for synchrophasor applications. Full article

Synchrophasor-driven smart grid applications aiming to orchestrate a diverse set of Distributed Energy Resources (DERs) require extensive infrastructure including substantial instrumentation hardware, communication network extensions and controller installations for coordinated operation. This can make the overall installation expensive. Additionally, due to the computational complexity and data-intensive nature of the PDC functionality, most of the existing PDC implementations are on a purely software level, making them unsuitable for the real-time applications. To address this, the current paper proposes an alternate architecture for the real-time synchrophasor-based control of DER applications (e.g., microgrids) incorporating a centralized synchronization hardware designed to replace aggregation Phasor Data Concentrators (PDCs) and supplementary control algorithms into a singular reconfigurable hardware. This particular hardware is termed a Synchrophasor Synchronization Gateway and Controller (SSGC). The robustness of the proposed architecture is tested by using real-time (RT) Controller Hardware-In-the-Loop (CHIL) simulation-based experiments by manipulating the communication network that connects the SSGC with multiple Phasor Measurement Unit (PMU) streams broadcasting data through the IEEE C37.118.2 protocol in real time. These PMU streams were generated by using a real-time microgrid model running on a Typhoon HIL 604 simulator. To manipulate the communication interface between the proposed SSGC hardware and the PMU streams, a configurable Wide Area Network (WAN) emulator and communication network impairment appliance deployed in the Candela Technologies CT910 external hardware was utilized. The real-time control system was expanded by incorporating a low-pass filter to eliminate the potential overswitching of a Battery Energy Storage System (BESS). The proposed architecture demonstrated a reliable performance under ideal to moderately tampered communication networks. However, under a significantly corrupted network, the performance of this architecture is acutely affected. Full article

The dynamic monitoring, control, and protection of modern power systems in real time require time-stamped electrical measurements to accurately estimate the bus voltage phasors using the state estimation function under normal and abnormal conditions. These measurements can be acquired by time-synchronized devices, known as phasor measurement units (PMUs). PMUs can measure bus voltage and branch current phasors of a three-phase network, as well as the frequency and the rate of change of frequency (ROCOF), with high speed, accuracy and time stamping provided by global positioning system (GPS) at the coordinated universal time (UTC). Various phasor estimation algorithms have been proposed in the literature, while most of them are concentrated in the discrete Fourier transform (DFT) algorithm, where an integer number of samples multiple of the nominal frequency is required for the computations. In cases where the frequency of the power grid deviates from its nominal value, the raw application of the DFT approach can lead to large errors during phasor estimation. Another approach of the phasor estimation is based on the phase-locked loop (PLL) techniques, widely used in grid tie inverters. PLL techniques can track dynamically (continuous time) the estimated frequency to the time-variant frequency of the power grid. A brief introduction to the basic concepts of the synchrophasor definition is provided, while the main DFT methods for synchrophasor estimation according to recent literature are mentioned. PLL-based PMU techniques are reviewed for both steady-state and dynamic conditions according to IEEE standards. In conclusion, the performance of PLL-based PMU algorithms presented in this literature review is discussed. Full article

The emerging smart-grid and microgrid concept implementation into the conventional power system brings complexity due to the incorporation of various renewable energy sources and non-linear inverter-based devices. The occurrence of frequent power outages may have a significant negative impact on a nation’s economic, societal, and fiscal standing. As a result, it is essential to employ sophisticated monitoring and measuring technology. Implementing phasor measurement units (PMUs) in modern power systems brings about substantial improvement and beneficial solutions, mainly to protection issues and challenges. PMU-assisted state estimation, phase angle monitoring, power oscillation monitoring, voltage stability monitoring, fault detection, and cyberattack identification are a few prominent applications. Although substantial research has been carried out on the aspects of PMU applications to power system protection, it can be evolved from its current infancy stage and become an open domain of research to achieve further improvements and novel approaches. The three principal objectives are emphasized in this review. The first objective is to present all the methods on the synchro-phasor-based PMU application to estimate the power system states and dynamic phenomena in frequent time intervals to observe centrally, which helps to make appropriate decisions for better protection. The second is to discuss and analyze the post-disturbance scenarios adopted through better protection schemes based on accurate and synchronized measurements through GPS synchronization. Thirdly, this review summarizes current research on PMU applications for power system protection, showcasing innovative breakthroughs, addressing existing challenges, and highlighting areas for future research to enhance system resilience against catastrophic events. Full article

Compared to traditional measurement devices, the micro-synchrophasor measurement unit (D-PMU or μPMU) in the distribution power system has great differences in data acquisition frequency, data format, data dimension, time-stamped information, etc. Hence, it is imperative to research the integration mechanism of heterogeneous data from multiple sources. Based on the analysis of the current technology of multi-source information fusion, this paper proposes a novel approach, which considers two aspects: the interoperability of multi-source data and the real-time processing of large-scale streaming data. To solve the problem of data interoperability, we have modified the model of D-PMU data and established a unified information model. Meanwhile, an advanced distributed processing technology has been deployed to solve the problem of real-time processing of streaming data. Based on this approach, a smart distribution power system wide-area measurement and control station can be established, and the correctness and practicality of the proposed method are verified by an on-field project. Full article