Maxime Baudette

Synchrophasor network, laboratory and software applications developed in the STRONg 2 rid project

This paper presents the activities carried out in one of the work packages of the Nordic Energy Research funded project Smart Transmission Grid Operation and Control (STRONg2rid). The main objective of the work package is to deploy a state-of-the-art software and hardware for developing power system operation, protection, control and automation applications. Several PMUs have been deployed at partner universities and a network of synchrophasors has been set up. In addition the Smart Transmission System Laboratory (SmarTS-Lab) has been established. This laboratory serves as a test-bench to develop and verify smart transmission grid technologies. A software development kit (S3DK) was developed within the project. The S3DK has been used to implement PMU-based applications and deploy them in different targets, including smart phones and tablets. Several tools and software applications which utilize synchrophasor measurements (from the laboratory or the deployed university PMU network) to perform power system monitoring, sub-synchronous power oscillation detection, etc., have been developed and are presented herein.

Testing and validation of a fast real-time oscillation detection PMU-based application for wind-farm monitoring

This article provides an overview of a monitoring application, its testing and validation process. The application was developed for the detection of sub-synchronous oscillations in power systems, utilizing real-time measurements from phasor measurement units (PMUs). It uses two algorithms simultaneously to both detect the frequency at which the oscillatory event occurs and the level of energy in the oscillations. The application has been developed and tested in the framework of SmarTS Lab, an environment capable of hardware-in-the-loop (HIL) simulation. The necessary components of the real-time chain of data acquisition are presented in this paper, as well as testing and validation results, to demonstrate the accuracy of the monitoring tool and the feasibility of fast prototyping for real-time PMU measurements based applications using the SmarTS Lab environment.

Power system model identification exploiting the Modelica language and FMI technologies

This article provides an overview of the work performed at SmarTS Lab on power system modeling and system identification within the FP7 iTesla project. The work was performed using Modelica as the modeling language for phasor time domain simulation and FMI (Flexible Mock-up Interface) Technologies for coupling Modelica models with simulation and optimization tools. The article focuses on use case examples of these Modelica models in an FMI driven environment to perform parameter identification.

‘In silico’ testing of a decentralized PMU data-based power systems mode estimator

This paper presents the software implementation of a Phasor Measurement Unit (PMU) data-based mode estimation application in a decentralized mode estimation architecture. This work builds from previous efforts in the development of a mode estimator implemented using a centralized architecture, meaning a set of modes were estimated for the whole system in a single processing location. One drawback of mode estimators that use centralized mode architecture is that the observability and therefore estimation of important low-damped local electromechanical modes can be affected by the higher observability of other dominant modes of the systems (e.g inter-area modes). This work proposes, implements and tests a decentralized architecture in order to increase the observation capability to provide better estimates of local low damped oscillations. In this architecture, the data from a single PMU or a group of local PMUs could be processed by a processor to estimate the modal parameters observed at a specific part of the grid or observed by specific group of PMUs. The decentralized architecture and results of tests are presented in this paper together with comparison with a centralized architecture.

A Phasor Measurement Unit Based Fast Real-time Oscillation Detection Application for Monitoring Wind-farm-to-grid Sub–synchronous Dynamics

Abstract—The increase of wind power share increasing has lead to operational challenges for its integration and impact on power grids. Regarding this, unexpected dynamic phenomena, such as oscillatory events around 13 Hz, among different wind farms were recorded in the United States Oklahoma Gas & Electric. Such interactions differ from traditional inter-area oscillations, and the ability to detect them is the beyond measurement capabilities of most of existing measurement equipment and monitoring tools in energy management systems. This article presents the development and implementation of algorithms for fast sub-synchronous oscillation detection, focusing on the aforementioned case. It proposes a real-time monitoring application that exploits synchronized phasor measurements, allowing real-time detection of sub-synchronous wind farm dynamics. This tool was built as a prototype for real-time application and utilizes phasor measurement unit data for enhanced monitoring and control. The article focuses on the tool’s design and its algorithms. Also, it will briefly present three approaches carried out for testing and validating the phasor measurement unit based application, one of which compares the proposed tool with an existing tool at Oklahoma Gas & Electric. Through such experiments, the tool presented in the article has been positively validated for real-time applications.

A Modelica Power System Component Library for Model Validation and Parameter Identification

This paper summarizes the work performed in one of the work-package of the FP7 iTesla project. This work consisted in the development of a power system component library for phasor time domain simu ...

Validating a real-time PMU-based application for monitoring of sub-synchronous wind farm oscillations

This paper presents validation experiments performed on a Phasor Measurement Unit (PMU) based fast oscillation detection application. The monitoring application focuses on the detection of sub-synchronous oscillations, utilizing real-time measurements from PMUs. The application was first tested through Hardware-In-the-Loop (HIL) simulation. Validation experiments were carried out with a different set-up by utilizing a micro grid laboratory. This second experimental set-up as well as the results of the validation experiments are presented in this paper.

A PMU-based fast real-time sub-synchronous oscillation detection application

The share of wind power has strongly increased in electricity production, raising several issues concerning its integration to power grids. Unexpected dynamic phenomena, such as oscillatory events around 13 Hz have been recorded in the US by Oklahoma Gas & Electric (OG&E). Such interactions differ from traditional and well studied inter-area oscillations, and the ability to detect them is beyond the measurement capabilities of most of the existing measurement equipment and monitoring tools in Energy Management Systems (EMS) systems. This paper presents the development and implementation of algorithms for PMU-based real-time fast sub-synchronous oscillation detection, focusing on the aforementioned case. The paper focuses on the tool itself and its algorithms, briefly presents an approach carried out for testing and validating it. Experience from the use of the tool at OG&E is also described.

‘In silico’ testing of a real-time PMU-based tool for power system mode estimation

This paper presents an overview of the software implementation of a real-time mode estimator application and its testing. The application was developed to estimate inter-area modes from both ambient and ring-down synchrophasor data from multiple phasor measurement units (PMU). The software application was implemented in LabVIEW using Statnetts synchrophasor software development kit (S3DK), to receive real-time synchrophasor measurements. The different features of the application were tested using two types of experiments presented herein. The first experiment is performed using emulated signals from a simple linear model. The second experiment was designed to use a linearized representation of the KTH-Nordic32 power system model. These experiments are used to carry out quantitative analyses of the tools performance.

RT-SIL performance analysis of synchrophasor-and-active load-based power system damping controllers

The Icelandic power network has transmission constraints that often lead to inter-area oscillations. Although conventional stabilization methods have been applied successfully in the past, there is potential to exploit large industrial loads to enhance system stability during stringent operation conditions. This paper analyzes the performance of two damping controllers. The controllers can use both synchrophasor signals and local measurements as their inputs. Damping is achieved by load modulation generated by a phasor-based oscillation signal. Real-Time Software-in-the-Loop testing is performed using Opal-RTs eMEGAsim Real-Time Simulator to derive hardware and computational requirements of a hardware prototype that will be implemented in the future.