Addressing the complexity of future power system dynamic behaviour

Lead Research Organisation: University of Strathclyde
Department Name: Electronic and Electrical Engineering

Abstract

Electrical power systems are undergoing unprecedented and ever-increasing change that will increase the levels of complexity and uncertainty to unprecedented levels, particularly in GB. Ensuring secure, reliable and stable power system operation is clearly paramount; not only for "traditional" electrical loads, but to power telecommunications, water supply and sanitation, natural gas production and delivery, and for transportation. Social discomfort, economic disruption and loss of life can arise in cases of partial or full blackouts. Uncertainty and complexity will arise due to the prevalence of Renewable Energy Sources (RES). In GB, millions of intermittent small energy sources (not under the control of the system operator) may be connected to the electricity distribution system in future, as opposed to historical arrangements, where a much smaller number (100 or so) of large-scale generators, under the control of the system operator, were connected to the transmission system. Furthermore, energy storage, electric vehicles, heat pumps, HVDC interconnectors, "smart grids" and associated control systems, will all act to increase the complexity and unpredictability of, and possibly introduce chaos to, the system. Extreme weather events are on the increase empirically and with reliance on renewable sources (mostly from solar and wind), this could also increase risks associated with uncertainty, complexity and system operability.
Internationally respected organisations such as the IEEE and CIGRE emphasise the increasing complexity of power systems and highlight problems with unpredictable and changing power system dynamics as challenges that might compromise security and could increase the risk of blackouts. They also highlight potential improvements in reducing these risks through enhanced monitoring, control, automation and special protection schemes. Prevention and mitigation of the risk of blackouts is essential and the focus of this proposal. Understanding the changing nature of system dynamics is fundamental to addressing this risk.
This Fellowship is focused on investigating, understanding, defining and representing previously un-encountered dynamic phenomena that will be manifest in future power systems due to the aforementioned increases in complexity and uncertainty. Novel modelling, prediction and control tools and methodologies will be developed to ensure an accelerated path to stable, secure, reliable and cost-effective operation and enhance understanding. This research will lead to prototype applications and demonstration in the world-leading facilities available at the host institution.
Ultimately, the main impact will be maximisation of the secure use of renewables and effective decarbonisation of the electricity system, through creating models and tools to enhance "operability" of electrical power systems and reduce blackout risk. The Fellowship will enable the candidate and his institution to be international leaders in this field, which impacts both society and the economy.

Planned Impact

This Fellowship is focused on defining, representing and investigating new dynamic phenomena arising in future power systems with increased complexity and uncertainty. Novel tools and methodologies will be developed to ensure stable, secure and reliable operation by increased awareness of system stability limits in close to real time operation. The ambition is to reach up to the level of developing proof-of-concept applications in laboratory and small demonstration scale. Consequently much higher integration of renewables and new technologies with various technical and environmental benefits can be achieved, while at the same time reducing the risk of blackouts.
Due to the significance of the problems for the wider society that the Fellowship is addressing, regulatory authorities, policy makers, system operators and network owners (both at transmission and distribution level) that need to make decisions in investment, planning and operational time scales would benefit significantly from the results. Interest from the wider power system industry (generation companies, technology providers, etc.) is also significant since various tools, improvements in services and devices can be used to prevent and mitigate cascading failures and blackouts.
In order to ensure the impact is realised the Fellowship proposal is supported by various industrial partners and research organisations (system operator/owner, technology provider, renewable generation developer, technology vendor and research institute), all with significant UK and international presence in the area of power engineering. Through regular communication as well as placements and research visits, extending also beyond the duration of the Fellowship, real world impact and applications will be enabled by exchanging information, developed methods, models and tools and fine tuning them to address practical issues. It will also offer an exceptional opportunity to support the research and maximise dissemination opportunities ensuring the potential for real world impact, and attracting more interested parties to join the discussion along the way. By close collaboration with main beneficiaries, the Fellowship will effectively inform and improve models, methods and tools to enable more secure, reliable and cost-effective operation of power systems with reduced risk of blackouts.
Following a well established impact with various industrial beneficiaries, engagement with regulatory authorities, will also be pursued to provide well-informed technical and independent input to the design of policies that will affect the operation of electricity markets and future of ancillary services, eventually improving everyday life of people.
The results of the research proposal will also be disseminated through high quality publications in top international journals and presentations on high visibility events (international conferences panel presentations, CIGRE/IEEE working groups, etc.) to ensure dissemination to the academic community and interested beneficiaries.
The Fellowship also has the potential to impact developing countries through addressing questions of integration of renewable generation and other technologies, according to targets set by respective governments. Impact will be ensured through existing research collaborative links with Official Development Assistance (ODA) listed countries and engagement with policy makers.
Since the prevention and mitigation of blackouts is of significant importance to the society, high level results will also be disseminated to the media as well as through online means to promote social awareness and maximise impact.

Publications

10 25 50
 
Description So far, methods for fast (close to real time) and informative assessment of the stability status of electrical power systems with increased penetration of reneable generation have been developed, through the use of interpretable machine learning. In addition, methods for the prediction of the onset of cascading events in electrical power systems as well as for the sensitivity analysis of the evolution of such events have also been developed.
Exploitation Route The developed methods can be used by the power industry and academia to better understand what, and to what extent, is affecting the appearance of complex dynamic phenomena related to system instability as well as the evolution of cascading events. This can be used as the basis for the design of effective control measures to stop or mitigate the impact of such events.
Sectors Energy

 
Description Artificial Intelligence in Electric systems stability
Amount £16,720 (GBP)
Organisation Government of the UK 
Department Commonwealth Scholarship Commission
Sector Public
Country United Kingdom
Start 03/2021 
End 03/2024
 
Description Efficient identification of critical cases that lead to instability in future power systems
Amount £4,407 (GBP)
Funding ID 2437830 
Organisation Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) 
Sector Public
Country United Kingdom
Start 09/2020 
End 03/2024
 
Description Entwine project
Amount £143,480 (GBP)
Organisation Ofgem Office of Gas and Electricity Markets 
Sector Public
Country United Kingdom
Start 03/2022 
End 04/2022
 
Description Impact of Grid Forming Converters on Power System Stability
Amount £4,407 (GBP)
Funding ID 2437798 
Organisation Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) 
Sector Public
Country United Kingdom
Start 09/2020 
End 03/2024
 
Description CIGRE C2.42 Working Group 
Form Of Engagement Activity A formal working group, expert panel or dialogue
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Professional Practitioners
Results and Impact CIGRE C2.42 Working Group on "The impact of the growing use of machine learning/Artificial Intelligence in the operation and control of Power Networks from an Operational perspective"
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2023
 
Description IEEE Task Force on "Applications of Big Data Analytics in Dynamic Security Assessment" 
Form Of Engagement Activity A formal working group, expert panel or dialogue
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Third sector organisations
Results and Impact IEEE Task Force on "Applications of Big Data Analytics in Dynamic Security Assessment"
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2022,2023
URL https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0142061521009947
 
Description Investigating the impact of protection device thresholds on the evolution of cascading events 
Form Of Engagement Activity A talk or presentation
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Professional Practitioners
Results and Impact Panel session presentation "Investigating the impact of protection device thresholds on the evolution of cascading events" panel session presentation "Integrating Relay Models with RMS Dynamic Simulations", IEEE PESGM 2021, 28 July 2021.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2021
 
Description Invited panel session presentation on "Identifying critical cases that lead to instability under uncertainty", IEEE PES General Meeting 2020 
Form Of Engagement Activity A talk or presentation
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Professional Practitioners
Results and Impact Invited presentation in panel session with title "Impact of uncertainties on dynamic security assessment" at IEEE Power and Energy Society General Meeting 2020 conference.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2020
URL https://resourcecenter.ieee-pes.org/conferences/general-meeting/PES_CVS_GM20_0806_4762.html
 
Description Member of IEEE Task Force on Big Data Analytics in Dynamic Security Assessment 
Form Of Engagement Activity A formal working group, expert panel or dialogue
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Study participants or study members
Results and Impact Participation and contribution to outputs of the IEEE Task Force.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2020
 
Description Panel presentation at super session "Stability, Dynamics, and Control of Emerging Renewable-Rich Power Systems" 
Form Of Engagement Activity A formal working group, expert panel or dialogue
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Other audiences
Results and Impact Invited panel presentation at super session "Stability, Dynamics, and Control of Emerging Renewable-Rich Power Systems", ISGT Europe, NoviSad, Serbia, October 2022.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2022
URL https://resourcecenter.ieee-pes.org/conferences/isgt-europe/PES_CVS_ISGTE22_SS01_SLD.html?source=IBP
 
Description Panel session presentation in "Data collection and future needs to account for the continuous growth of sensing data in control rooms" IEEE PES General Meeting, July 2022. 
Form Of Engagement Activity A formal working group, expert panel or dialogue
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Other audiences
Results and Impact Panel session presentation in "Data collection and future needs to account for the continuous growth of sensing data in control rooms", supported by the IEEE AMPS Big Data Analytics Subcommittee, IEEE PES General Meeting, July 2022. Presentation title: "Data-driven transient stability assessment focusing on location aspects and important system variables".
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2022
URL https://resourcecenter.ieee-pes.org/conferences/general-meeting/PES_CVS_GM22_0721_3786.html
 
Description Panel session presentation in "Probabilistic Transient Stability Assessment of Power Systems with High Penetration of Renewable Generation", 17th International Conference on Probabilistic Methods Applied to Power Systems (PMAPS), 15 June 2022 
Form Of Engagement Activity A formal working group, expert panel or dialogue
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Other audiences
Results and Impact Panel session presentation in "Probabilistic Transient Stability Assessment of Power Systems with High Penetration of Renewable Generation", Presentation title: "Probabilistic Analysis of Power System Stability", 17th International Conference on Probabilistic Methods Applied to Power Systems (PMAPS), 15 June 2022
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2022
URL https://www.pmaps2022.org/img/ppt/W1B/01%20P%20Papadopoulos%20-%20Probabilistic%20Transient%20Stabil...
 
Description Participation in UK-Germany Energy systems symposium organised by RAEng and acatech 
Form Of Engagement Activity Participation in an activity, workshop or similar
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Study participants or study members
Results and Impact Invitation to sypmposium organised by the Royal Academy of Engineering and Germany's National Academy of Science and Engineering (acatech). The aim is to foster exchange and collaboration on national energy transition challenges and help direct emerging and ongoing research towards solving the most pressing net zero policy problems.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2020
URL https://www.raeng.org.uk/events/events-programme/2020/october/uk-de-energy-systems-symposium-acceler...
 
Description Predicting Cascading Failures in Power Systems using Graph Convolutional Networks 
Form Of Engagement Activity Participation in an activity, workshop or similar
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Professional Practitioners
Results and Impact Many in the ML community wish to take action on climate change, but are unsure of the pathways through which they can have the most impact. This workshop highlights work that demonstrates that, while no silver bullet, ML can be an invaluable tool in reducing greenhouse gas emissions and in helping society adapt to the effects of climate change. Climate change is a complex problem, for which action takes many forms - from theoretical advances to deployment of new technology. Many of these actions represent high-impact opportunities for real-world change, and are simultaneously interesting academic research problems.

This workshop was held as part of the Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems (NeurIPS), one of the premier conferences on machine learning, which draws a wide audience of researchers and practitioners in academia, industry, and related fields.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2021
URL https://www.climatechange.ai/papers/neurips2021/76
 
Description Presentation at panel session "Enhancing power system operation through online analytics", IEEE PES General Meeting, July 2022 
Form Of Engagement Activity A formal working group, expert panel or dialogue
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Other audiences
Results and Impact Chair and speaker of panel session "Enhancing power system operation through online analytics", supported by the IEEE AMPS Big Data Analytics Subcommittee, planned for IEEE PES General Meeting, July 2022. Presentation title: "Predicting the onset of cascading failures using machine learning".
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2022
URL https://resourcecenter.ieee-pes.org/conferences/general-meeting/PES_CVS_GM22_0719_3010.html
 
Description Presentation at the IEEE Task Force on Modeling of protective relays in phasor-domain and fundamental frequency electromechanical dynamics simulation 
Form Of Engagement Activity A formal working group, expert panel or dialogue
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Study participants or study members
Results and Impact A presentation with title "Investigating cascading events using RMS simulations" that led to plans for further engagement with the Task Force.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2020
 
Description Presentation at the event "Chartership and Career Path" jointly organised by IEEE UKRI PES Chapter and CIGRE UK NGN 
Form Of Engagement Activity A talk or presentation
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach National
Primary Audience Postgraduate students
Results and Impact Presentation about career path.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2020
URL https://cigre.org.uk/ngn-events/webinar-chartership-and-career-path/