Power system operation and Control

Lectures prepared by

Prof. S. Shahnawaz Ahmed

Topics that would be covered:

Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA)

State Estimation
Unit Commitment
Electricity Market
Automatic Generation Control
Optimal Power Flow
Security
Objectives of the course:

1.To understand the evolution from a traditional power system to

electricity market and then to smart grid.

2.To be familiar with the common control features in any power

system.

3.To understand the way various control activities are correlated .

 Background
•Availability of commercially viable and ‘quality’ electrical energy in a bulk
quantum is the basic need for the survival and evolution of the modern civilization.
This is because electrical energy is the most convenient one for generation,
transmission, distribution, consumption, storage and control.

•The phrase ‘quality’ refers to a target that electricity be delivered to the end users
without exceeding the allowed limits in voltage deviation, frequency drift, wave
shape distortion (i.e. deviation from pure sine wave) and outage. Typical values of
these limits are respectively set at 5%, 1%, 5% and only 32 seconds/year (i.e.
99.9999% availability) in the context of today’s world.

•Power System: This is a system where a plethora of generation (G), transmission

(T), distribution (D) and utilization (i.e. consumption and storage) apparatus, and
measurement, control, protection and monitoring devices are so interconnected
that it becomes possible to bring power from distant and dispersed generation
units with fuel diversity (fossil fuel, nuclear, hydro, renewable) and deliver it in a
bulk quantum with quality and economy to the consumers who use appliances of
diverse nature ranging from low tech to high tech.

•The planning, design and operation of a power system requires a knowledge of its
main control functions .
 Generators shown without the unit
transformers (i.e. the transformer that steps
up 11 or 15 kV to 132 or 230 kV)

Tie transformer
(autotransformer) between
132 kV and 230 kV buses

Transformers that step

down 132 kV to 33 kV
for connection to load
feeders

Fig.: Single Line Diagram of 200-bus grid of Bangladesh Power System (BPS) as of 2012
•Since the inception in the late nineteenth century (around the year 1880)
power systems have been traditionally built in a vertically integrated form
comprising generation, transmission and distribution facilities owned and
operated by the same entity.

•Since the late twentieth century (around 1996) a conceptual ‘wave’ termed
‘restructuring’/’deregulation’/’unbundling’ swept across the world starting from
California of USA. This concept was the brainchild of primarily the economists.
This resulted in separate owners and operators for the three sectors to pave the
way for competition in the generation sector (i.e. many generation entities) and
creation of ‘electricity market’ from where the distribution agencies will buy
electricity at spot price and/or under long term bilateral contracts.

•Needless to say , the operation and control objectives and schemes for a
restructured power system differs to some extent from those for a vertically
integrated one because of the differences in the interests of the owners of the
three primary sectors (G, T, D).
•Since the early twenty first century (around 2007), a new vision termed
‘smart grid’ was floated mainly by the public bodies and regulators of
electricity utilities in the North America against the backdrop of several
incidents of massive blackouts that occurred in USA and Europe in the years
2003 and 2004.

•The smart grid vision is still in the stage of evolution; however, it stems from
an idea that the large power grids interconnecting bulk and centralized
power plants across the world are ‘aging’ and hence a potential solution
could be to make the system self-healing in the event of blackouts through
embedding (i) distributed small-scale generation resources including
renewable sources, (ii) plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (that use high power
density rechargeable alkaline batteries) and (iii) smart appliances (self-
responsive to system condition) at the consumer end all of which can be
communicated by the grid control centre utilizing the available distributed
communication media such as cell phone network, internet, broadband
wireless systems such as WiMAX, fiber optic networks, and power line
carriers (PLC).
•In brief DERs (Distributed Energy Resources including storage devices), two
way communication and DR (Demand Response) are the conspicuous features
of a smart grid.
http://sensorweb.cs.gsu.edu/?q=EnergyWeb
(Real-time price signal)
Vision for a smart grid city

Integrated gasification combined cycle

Carbon Capture and Storage
 Why power system control is so important?

The answer is very simple.

•People are more demanding regarding electricity compared to other

services.

•It is the people’s expectation that whenever they switch on a device

it should get supply.

•They are not ready to hear “electricity network is busy”

unlike the patience they show to entertain a message: Telephone/
cell phone network is now busy.
 Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA)
For subsequent materials assistance taken from various sources as follows.
1.Power Eng. Handbook, 2001, CRC Press, NY, 2001

2. Jan Machowski, Janusz W. Bialek and James R. Bumby: POWER SYSTEM

DYNAMICS Stability and Control, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd, UK, 2008.

3. Antonio Gomez-Expostio, Antonio J. Conejo and Claudio Canizares,

“Electric Energy Systems Analysis and Operation”, CRC Presss, New York, 2009.

4. S. Shahnawaz Ahmed: “Power System Control”, Proceedings of short course

“Recent Trends in Power System Operation” organized for the professionals in the
academic/industrial sectors by the Faculty of Electrical Engineering, UTM
at Johor Bahru, Malaysia, 17-19 September 2001, pp. 2-1 to 2-16.

5. A.J.Wood, B.F. Wollenberg and Gerald B. Sheble, “Power Generation, Operation

and Control”, John Wiley & Sons, 3rd Edition, 2013.

6. W.A.Elmore, “Pilot Protective Relaying”, ABB-Marcel Dekker Inc., 2000.

7. Janaka Ekanayake, Kithsiri Liyanage, Jianzhong Wu, Akihiko Yokoyama and Nick
Jenkins, Smart Grid: Technology and Applications, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., UK,
First Edition, 2012. (a few diagrams from Chapter 8)
Overview of Operation and Control

Source: 1.Power Eng. Handbook, 2001, CRC Press, NY, 2001

Source 2:Jan Machowski, Janusz W. Bialek and James R. Bumby:
POWER SYSTEM DYNAMICS Stability and Control, John Wiley & Source:3. Antonio Gomez-Expostio, Antonio J. Conejo and Claudio Canizares,
Sons, Ltd, UK, 2008. “Electric Energy Systems Analysis and Operation”, CRC Presss, New York, 2009.

in regional or national control centre server
Optimal power flow: dispatches
generators to minimize generation cost
taking into account line loss, voltage and
line flow limits
in substations, power stations
State estimation: cleans up acquired data
from random noise and gross errors
AGC: secondary control of frequency
from area (regional) control centre taking
into account load change, tie line flows and
generation dispatches
Source:1
Most of the applications are executed in real time i.e.
require repetition at few seconds to few minutes,
using on-line data.
Basics of typical Power system control:

•First load is forecasted for next 24 hours

•then it is decided which generation units be

committed in each interval or an hour

• and how much power should economically

be dispatched from each of the committed
units.

•The decision goes to what is known as

Automatic Generation Control (AGC) that
maintains the frequency at the desired value.

•If needed a security analysis is done in Forecasting the demand

advance to avert the adverse impacts of
probable severe contingencies. This requires
altering the current operating condition of a
system based on the decisions obtained by
running another tool “Optimal Power Flow”
giving priority to security rather than to
economy.
Generator’s Control for frequency and Voltage

Source 2
Source: 3
•In a power system with increase in demand the frequency and voltage
both decreases and vice versa.

The frequency can be restored partially by the primary (local)

action of generator-turbine governor (i.e. local control by each unit
or plant)

while complete return to the normal value is possible by the

secondary control (e.g. AGC) exercised by the Area Control Centre.
If necessary other secondary actions such as real power balancing,
load shedding are also exercised by the area or regional control
centres.

In a large interconnected system tertiary control (if needed) is

exercised by the National Load Dispatch Center that redetermines
the reference values of power in individual generating units to the
values calculated by optimal dispatch in such a way that the overall
demand is satisfied together with the schedule of power
interchanges.
The voltage can be restored by the primary or local
control from AVR of each generation unit and if
necessary by transformer tap changing, capacitor
switching at substations. However, secondary control
is not always necessary but if needed secondary
control such as coordinated reactive power
dispatching, load shedding etc. is exercised from area
control centres.
 Basic structure of SCADA

Various communication links used in SCADA

Source: Electric Power Distribution
System Engineering by Turan Gӧnen
Combination of radial (star) and
multi-point (party line) master-RTU
network

Hierarchical control of power system

A typical layout of SCADA control centre
 So many transducers needed to send signals to RTU

RTU IED PMU

The time error of 1 μs corresponds to the

angle error of 360◦/20 · 103 = 0.018◦, that is
0.005%. Such an error is small enough from the
point of view of phasor measurement.
WAMPC: Wide Area Monitoring, Protection and Control system is another advanced
variant of EMS that uses only PMUs .
Data base

Data base incorporates comprehensive

information about the system. The information can
broadly be classified into three groups such as:
i) on- line data from the RTUs;
ii) fixed data entered through man-machine
interface;
iii)output of state estimator and other application
programs.
State Estimator

• The raw telemetered data received from the RTUs is mainly corrupted by two
types of errors- random measurement noise and gross error i.e. bad data.

•The first type of error mainly results from current and potential transformer errors,
transducer (meter) inaccuracies, analog to digital conversion, noise in
communication channels or interference noise.

•Gross error mainly results from faults or failures in metering and communication
system.

•State estimator cleans up the raw data using a redundant set of on-line
measurements through a statistical criterion.
Security : monitor, analyze contingencies and
take SCOPF based actions

Typical classification of power

system security related states
Load Forecasting

• Load forecasting is the prediction of future

electricity demand by using some statistical
techniques to adjust past demands to present
weather conditions and other anticipated events.

•Depending upon system dynamics e.g. change in

demanded MW/minute, short term forecasting takes
place usually once a day or every hour or few hours to
develop an operating schedule.
Unit Commitment

Unit commitment is a procedure to decide which of the

available generators should start up or shut down usually
over a time period of 24 hours in such a manner that the
forecasted demand is met with a spinning reserve which
would satisfy the requirements of both the security as well as
the optimum saving in fuel cost.

Economic Dispatch

Economic dispatch function determines the best allocation

of generation requirements among the committed generating
units so that the total cost of supplying the energy to meet
the demand within the constraints imposed by security
considerations is minimized.
Automatic Generation Control

AGC is a closed loop control system for implementing the

decisions of economic dispatch on each generating unit while
achieving the following objectives.

•maintain system frequency;

•adjust generation from the base-point economic allocation in

response to small-scale changes in demand;

•control tie line power flow to meet interchange schedule in case

the power system is interconnected with the another or the
system comprises two or more interconnected areas.
Underlying logics of an
AGC scheme

Use of SCADA in generation control

 NOTE

•The prime requirement for ensuring reliability, quality and

affordability of the electricity supply either in a regulated or a
deregulated or a smart grid environment, is an on-line and real-
time control system which makes large scale use of emerging IT
and communication technologies.

•However, the software and hardware cost proportion in this is

approximately 60:40. Development of the customized software
for a power system control centre requires about 20 man-years
programming effort.

•This necessitates involvement of a strong team of experts with

in-depth knowledge in power system dynamics and modeling,
and a few experts to assist them in computer programming.