Solving Grid Challenges with Combined Transmission and Distribution System Models

Dear Colleagues,

The complexity of the electric power grid, the largest machine ever built, is rapidly increasing as the application of renewable generators, storage devices, smart grid devices, new measurement systems, and electric vehicles grows, bringing operational, stability, and security challenges. Transmission operators require increased visibility in distribution operations. Distribution operations and controls must support the transmission system needs. Defending against cyber-attacks poses unprecedented challenges. Large-scale models, models that span from transmission to secondary distribution, models of a size that has not been solved to date, are needed to address these challenges. Analysis of such large-scale models, from design to real-time operations, requires new analysis approaches, approaches that work across the wide variety of topologies, approaches that solve systems with tens of millions of nodes, approaches that support distributed computations, and approaches that converge on stiff problems. Topics of interest in the Special Issue include, but are not limited to, the following:

• The modeling and analysis of transmission, substations, primary distribution, and secondary distribution together in one model, referred to as an Integrated System Model; 
• Analysis approaches to solving Integrated System Models; 
• Analyses where Integrated System Models from two or more utilities are combined into a multi-utility Integrated System Model; 
• Applications of Integrated System Models in:
  
  • Forecasting renewable generation and net load;
  • Energy independence studies;
  • Energy trading studies;
  • Real-time monitoring and control;
  • Voltage stability analysis;
  • Defending against cyber-attacks;
  • Multi-domain modeling;
  • Cloud-computing.

Dr. Bilal A. Bhatti
Prof. Dr. Robert P. Broadwater
Topic Editors