Power system operation and Control

Lectures prepared by

Prof. S. Shahnawaz Ahmed

Topics that would be covered :

 Background of power system: role,

traditional vs. deregulated, and smart grid concept

 Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition

(SCADA)

 Energy Management System (EMS)

 Security
 Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition
(SCADA)
For subsequent materials assistance taken from various sources as follows.
1. Power Eng. Handbook, CRC Press, NY, 2001 or Taylor and Francis, 2006

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, 2014.

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)
 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 .
• 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 concept

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).
 Smart grid concept
•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 or distribution system
control centre via a building EMS or a smart meter 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
Vision for a smart grid city

Integrated gasification combined cycle

Carbon Capture and Storage

Korea Electric Power Corporation

 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.

• Why control difficult?

Objectives of Conceptual Model of Real-time Control

• Matching demand continuously with generation economically

• Keeping V, f in allowed range

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 Forecasting the demand
done in 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.
Implementation of Real-time control

Information

Remote Station Decision Master Station

(Plant/Substation) (Control Center)

Confirmation

• Data acquisition and Control command sent by a system known as SCADA

• EMS combining SCADA and application functions

Overview of Operation and Control

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

 EMS Depiction

in substations, power stations

in regional or national control centre server

State estimation: cleans up acquired data

from random noise and gross errors
AGC: secondary control of frequency
from area (regional) control center
taking into account load change, tie line
flows and generation dispatches
Optimal power flow: dispatches
generators to minimize generation cost
taking into account line loss, voltage and
line flow limits
Most of the applications are executed in real time i.e. require repetition at few seconds to few
minutes, using on-line data.
 SCADA

Basic structure of SCADA

Working Principle:
• Data acquisition: Through suitable transducer (non electrical), CTS, PTs, analog filters
and rectifiers, analog quantities converted into equivalent analogous dc signal and then
converted into digital form. Digital quantities (CB status) converted into pulses.

• Logging: Acquired data are processed by built in μP of RTUs and stored in database.

• Communication: Data(Limit exceeding or exceptional changes) are transferred to master

station or control center’s RCS. Modem needs for communication without distortion.

• Master station: LAN connected assembly of several servers and terminals.

 Store data in master station database
 Interface showing violations of various operational data, CB status etc.
accompanied with flashing indication and audible alarm

 Power system application functions are assigned to dedicated servers.

 Decisions and output of executing the application software transmitted to RTUS.

• Supervisory Control: Allows operator to remotely control devices : open and

closing of CB, isolator, load shedding etc.
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

 SCADA Communication Link

PLC

• Line Trap: Blocks communication signal

• Coupling Capacitor: Blocks low frequency power

signal
Communication links in SCADA
• LMU : Tuning equipment
A typical layout of SCADA control centre
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.
Remote Station • RTUs are 1st generation while IEDs
are the 2nd generation of data
acquisition devices. PMU is the

So many transducers needed to send signals to RTU

latest development

• RTU needs transducer for acquiring

data and got limited computational
power while IED with more
processing and decision making
power.

• DFT for RTU & IED

RTU IED

• IED simply receives V, I signal from PT and CT at each connection point and
computes all relevant data including E, f, θ

• This enables the same IED to integrate monitoring, metering, control and protection
functions.

• All of these can not only acquire data but also control equipment like breaker,
capacitor bank, tap changer under remote command
PMU
• Calculate both magnitude and phase angle i.e.
phasor. So, known as PMU

• Analog signal is filtered and sent to ADC

• Sampler impulses generated by a oscillator

operating with receiver of GPS in phase locked
loop system

• N data samples corresponding to whole time

period with corresponding time stamp sent to μp

• Samples are used to calculate orthogonal

component of each phasor using DFT
• Filters both components using two orthogonal filters. So, orthogonal components are
of 1st harmonics

• GPS satellites in time synchronization among various IEDs at different locations

ensures capture of signal at same instant, so relative phase angle with accuracy

• 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.
WAMPAC: Wide Area Monitoring, Protection and Control system is another advanced
variant of EMS that uses only PMUs .
 EMS Application Functions

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.

The emerging trend is to connect the EMS database with a the GIS
(Geographical Information System) server. GIS maps and locates all the resources
at supply and demand end with geographical coordinates. This can also display the real
time status and operational quantities of the feeders and consumers’ service lines.
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.
Load Forecasting

•Load forecasting is the prediction of future electricity demand by using

some statistical techniques or machine learning tools (such as regression or
ANN) to adjust past demands to present weather conditions and other
anticipated events.

For control purpose a short term forecasting is done

usually once a day or every hour or few hours
(depending upon system dynamics e.g. change in
demanded MW/minute) to develop an operating
schedule of the generators.
Security : monitor, analyze contingencies and
take SCOPF based actions
• Operating, Security and Load
constraints exist in power system.

• Normal state: all the constraints are

met such that the occurrence of any
credible but unforeseen
disturbances will not lead the
power system to the emergency
state.

• Alert State: Security constraints

violated

• Emergency State: Severe

disturbance will lead to it or even
blackout.
Typical classification of power
system security related states
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.