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

Abstract

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.

Keywords:

• power system oscillations
• monitoring application
• PMU
• wind farm
• sub-synchronous oscillations

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Luigi Vanfretti

Luigi Vanfretti received his E.E. degree from Universidad de San Carlos de Guatemala, Guatemala, in 2005 and his M.Sc. and Ph.D. in electric power engineering from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, NY, USA, in 2007 and 2009, respectively. He was a visiting researcher with University of Glasgow, Glasgow, Scotland, in 2005. He became an assistant professor at KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, Sweden, in 2010; he was conferred the Swedish title of “Docent” in 2012 and obtained a tenured associate professor position in 2013, which he currently holds. He also serves as a special advisor in R&D strategy and international collaboration for the Research and Development Division of Statnett SF, the Norwegian transmission system operator, where he has worked since 2012. His research interests are in the general area of power system dynamics, while his main focus is on synchrophasor applications.

Maxime Baudette

Maxime Baudette is a Ph.D. student in the Electric Power Systems Department at the KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, Sweden. He received the M.Sc. in electrical engineering from KTH (Sweden) and Supélec (France) in 2013. He is a member of the SmarTS-Lab research group at KTH. He has keen interest in real-time simulations; the HIL approach; and wide-area monitoring, protection, and control (WAMPAC).

José-Luiz Domínguez-García

José-Luis Domínguez-García received his B.S.and M.S. in industrial engineering from the School of Industrial Engineering of Barcelona,Technical University of Catalonia, Barcelona, Spain, in 2009. He developed his master’s thesis in Oulun Yliopisto, Oulu, Finland. In 2013, he received his Ph.D. in electrical engineering from UPC with a qualification of excellent ”Cum Laude.” He received the Outstanding Ph.D. Thesis Award from UPC in 2015. Since 2010, he has been a researcher in the Catalonia IREC. He was an academic visitor of the Institute of Energy, Cardiff University, Wales, UK, in 2011. His research interests are modeling and control of electrical machines and power converters, renewable energy integration in power systems, power system dynamics, and linear system theory.

Muhammad Shoaib Almas

Muhammad Shoaib Almas is a Ph.D. candidate at the Electric Power Systems Division of KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, Sweden. He recevied his M.Sc. and B.E. in electrical power engineering from KTH (Sweden, 2011), and National University of Sciences and Technology (NUST) (Pakistan, 2007) respectively. He is a member of the SmarTS-Lab research group at KTH. He has keen interest in real-time simulations, the HIL approach, substation automation, WAMPAC, internetworking, and cyber-security.

Austin White

Austin White is a lead engineer at OG&E in Oklahoma City, OK, USA. He is currently responsible for transmission/substation protective system settings and coordination, disturbance event/misoperation analysis, and system modeling/simulation. Recently, he has been leading the efforts to deploy a synchronized phasor measurement system for OG&E. He received his B.S. in electrical engineering from Oklahoma Christian University in 2001, followed by his M.S. in engineering and technology management from Oklahoma State University in 2008. He is also a licensed Professional Engineer in the state of Oklahoma.

Jan Ove Gjerde

Jan Ove Gjerde was born in Hareid in 1958. He received his M.Sc. in electrical engineering from the Norwegian Institute of Technology in 1983. He has long experience in R&D from the energy sector, both as a senior research scientist at Sintef Energy Research and as a department head at ABB Corporate Research, Power System and Components Department. From 2011–2013, he served as vice president of R&D at Statnett and was responsible for developing R&D strategies for the overall R&D programs at Statnett, in particular, for use on new concepts for risk management, wide area monitoring system (WAMS), wide area control system (WACS), and wide area protection systems (WAPS), and the overall R&D programs at Statnett. He is currently a special advisor in the R&D division of Statnett SF.