Causes of the 2003 major grid blackouts in North America and Europe, and recommended means to improve system dynamic performance
TL;DR: In this article, the authors present the major conclusions drawn from the presentations and ensuing discussions during the all day session, focusing on the root causes of grid blackouts, together with recommendations based on lessons learned.
Abstract: On August 14, 2003, a cascading outage of transmission and generation facilities in the North American Eastern Interconnection resulted in a blackout of most of New York state as well as parts of Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, and Ontario, Canada. On September 23, 2003, nearly four million customers lost power in eastern Denmark and southern Sweden following a cascading outage that struck Scandinavia. Days later, a cascading outage between Italy and the rest of central Europe left most of Italy in darkness on September 28. These major blackouts are among the worst power system failures in the last few decades. The Power System Stability and Power System Stability Controls Subcommittees of the IEEE PES Power System Dynamic Performance Committee sponsored an all day panel session with experts from around the world. The experts described their recent work on the investigation of grid blackouts. The session offered a unique forum for discussion of possible root causes and necessary steps to reduce the risk of blackouts. This white paper presents the major conclusions drawn from the presentations and ensuing discussions during the all day session, focusing on the root causes of grid blackouts. This paper presents general conclusions drawn by this Committee together with recommendations based on lessons learned.
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03 Mar 2009
TL;DR: In this article, the authors provide a comprehensive coverage of robust power system frequency control understanding, simulation and design, and develop an appropriate intuition relative to the robust load frequency regulation problem in real-world power systems, rather than to describe sophisticated mathematical analytical methods.
Abstract: Frequency control as a major function of automatic generation control is one of the important control problems in electric power system design and operation, and is becoming more significant today due to the increasing size, changing structure, emerging new uncertainties, environmental constraints, and the complexity of power systems. Robust Power System Frequency Control uses the recent development of linear robust control theory to provide practical, systematic, fast, and flexible algorithms for the tuning of power system load-frequency controllers. The physical constraints and important challenges related to the frequency regulation issue in a deregulated environment are emphasized, and most results are supplemented by real-time simulations. The developed control strategies attempt to bridge the existing gap between the advantages of robust/optimal control and traditional power system frequency control design. The material summarizes the long term research outcomes and contributions of the author’s experience with power system frequency regulation. It provides a thorough understanding of the basic principles of power system frequency behavior over a wide range of operating conditions. It uses simple frequency response models, control structures and mathematical algorithms to adapt modern robust control theorems with frequency control issues as well as conceptual explanations. The engineering aspects of frequency regulation have been considered, and practical methods for computer analysis and design are also discussed. Robust Power System Frequency Control provides a comprehensive coverage of frequency control understanding, simulation and design. The material develops an appropriate intuition relative to the robust load frequency regulation problem in real-world power systems, rather than to describe sophisticated mathematical analytical methods.
1,018 citations
01 Oct 2012
TL;DR: The Global Energy Assessment (GEA) as mentioned in this paper brings together over 300 international researchers to provide an independent, scientifically based, integrated and policy-relevant analysis of current and emerging energy issues and options.
Abstract: The Global Energy Assessment (GEA) brings together over 300 international researchers to provide an independent, scientifically based, integrated and policy-relevant analysis of current and emerging energy issues and options. It has been peer-reviewed anonymously by an additional 200 international experts. The GEA assesses the major global challenges for sustainable development and their linkages to energy; the technologies and resources available for providing energy services; future energy systems that address the major challenges; and the policies and other measures that are needed to realize transformational change toward sustainable energy futures. The GEA goes beyond existing studies on energy issues by presenting a comprehensive and integrated analysis of energy chalenges, opportunities and strategies, for developing, industrialized and emerging economies. This volume is a invaluable resource for energy specialists and technologists in all sectors (academia, industry and government) as well as policymakers, development economists and practitioners in international organizations and national governments.
812 citations
TL;DR: This survey attempts to summarize the current state of research efforts in the communication networks of smart grid, which may help to identify the research problems in the continued studies.
753 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors examine some of the more recent major blackouts and discuss the root causes and dynamics of these events, identifying high-level conclusions and recommendations for improving system dynamic performance and reducing the risk of such catastrophic events.
Abstract: This paper examines some of the more recent major blackouts and discusses some of the root causes and dynamics of these events. The paper aims to identify high-level conclusions and recommendations for improving system dynamic performance and reducing the risk of such catastrophic events
434 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, a voltage-source converter (VSC) based high-voltage dc (HVDC) transmission is investigated for interconnection of two very weak ac systems.
Abstract: In this paper, voltage-source converter (VSC) based high-voltage dc (HVDC) transmission is investigated for interconnection of two very weak ac systems. By using the recently proposed power-synchronization control, the short-circuit capacities of the ac systems are no longer the limiting factors, but rather the load angles. For the analysis of the stability, the Jacobian transfer matrix concept has been introduced. The right-half plane (RHP) transmission zero of the ac Jacobian transfer matrix moves closer to the origin with larger load angles. The paper shows that, due to the bandwidth limitation imposed by the RHP zero on the direct-voltage control of the VSC, high dc-capacitance values are needed for such applications. In addition, the paper proposes a control structure particularly designed for weak-ac-system interconnections. As an example, it is shown that the proposed control structure enables a power transmission of 0.86 p.u. from a system with the short-circuit ratio (SCR) of 1.2 to a system with an SCR of 1.0. This should be compared to previous results for VSC based HVDC using vector current control. In this case, only 0.4 p.u. power transmission can be achieved for dc link where only one of the ac systems has an SCR of 1.0.
399 citations
Cites background from "Causes of the 2003 major grid black..."
...Large blackouts in America and Europe confirmed clearly that the close coupling of the neighboring systems might also include the risk of uncontrolled cascading effects in large and heavily loaded systems [3], [4]....
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References
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TL;DR: In this paper, an analytical basis for an application of slow coherency theory to the design of an islanding scheme, which is employed as an important part of a corrective control strategy to deal with large disturbances.
Abstract: This paper provides the analytical basis for an application of slow coherency theory to the design of an islanding scheme, which is employed as an important part of a corrective control strategy to deal with large disturbances. The analysis is conducted under varying networks conditions and loading conditions. The results indicate that the slow coherency based grouping is almost insensitive to locations and severity of the initial faults. However, because of the loosely coherent generators and physical constraints the islands formed change slightly based on location and severity of the disturbance, and loading conditions. A detailed description of the procedure to form the islands after having determined the grouping of generators using slow coherency is presented. The verification of the islanding scheme is proven with simulations on a 179-bus, 29-generator test system.
384 citations
"Causes of the 2003 major grid black..." refers background in this paper
...Other adaptive controls such as adaptive islanding [22] and automatic load shedding [23] may also provide significant improvements to system reliability....
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TL;DR: In this paper, the authors proposed a self-healing strategy to deal with catastrophic events when power system vulnerability analysis indicates that the system is approaching an extreme emergency state, and a load shedding scheme based on the rate of frequency decline is applied.
Abstract: This paper provides a self-healing strategy to deal with catastrophic events when power system vulnerability analysis indicates that the system is approaching an extreme emergency state. In the authors' approach, the system is adaptively divided into smaller islands with consideration of quick restoration. Then, a load shedding scheme based on the rate of frequency decline is applied. The proposed scheme is tested on a 179-bus, 20-generator sample system and shows very good performance.
260 citations
Abstract: This paper provides a self-healing strategy to deal with catastrophic events when power system vulnerability analysis indicates that the system is approaching an extreme emergency state. The system is adaptively divided into smaller islands with consideration of quick restoration. Then an adaptive load shedding scheme based on the rate of frequency decline is applied. The proposed scheme is tested on a 179-bus, 20-generator sample system and shows very good performance.
181 citations
"Causes of the 2003 major grid black..." refers background in this paper
...Other adaptive controls such as adaptive islanding [22] and automatic load shedding [23] may also provide significant improvements to system reliability....
[...]
06 Jun 2004
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors describe the major events that occurred as the blackout initiated and evolved and identify the technical causes characterising the different phases of the process, which led to the general blackout.
Abstract: On September 28, 2003 the Italian power system experienced an electric power blackout. The outage affected an area with an estimated 60 million people and load variation in the continental grid from about 24000 MW at the early hours of the day, up to 50000 MW during the central part of the day. The event which caused the blackout began at 3:01:00 am and proceeded up to 3:28:00. Power was restored after three hours in the North area and during the same day in the large part of Italy. The energy not delivered amounts to 180GWh. The paper explains the major events that occurred as the blackout initiated and evolved and identifies the technical causes characterising the different phases of the process, which led to the general blackout. It lists the sequence of the interconnection loss and reconstructs the dynamic phases of unstable phenomena leading to the separation from Europe. The subsequent slow death throes of the separated Italian network with a cascade of generator tripping is also described up to final blackout.
131 citations
"Causes of the 2003 major grid black..." refers background in this paper
...Italian Blackout of September 28, 2003 [4], [5], [14]...
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10 Jun 2004
TL;DR: In this paper, a fault on the Swiss power system caused the overloading of two Swiss internal lines close to the Italian border, which resulted in a very sudden loss of synchronism between the Italian system and the UCTE grids, causing the loss of the whole import.
Abstract: On September 28th, 2003, at 3:01 a.m., a fault on the Swiss power system caused the overloading of two Swiss internal lines close to the Italian border. The interconnection lines were heavily loaded by the large power import and the coordination between the system operators was not sufficient to mitigate the overload. The consequent loss of those important branches caused cascading outages of the lines interconnecting the Italian system and the remaining part of the UCTE (Union for the Coordination of the Transmission of Electricity) system. This resulted in a very sudden loss of synchronism between the Italian system and the UCTE grids, causing the loss of the whole import. The consequent power unbalance caused the frequency in Italy to decline; the automatic load shedding procedure was not able to shed load enough to balance the generation and the load, and this resulted in the blackout. The paper provides a short description of the pre-fault system operation and of the main events that triggered the blackout, identifying some of the main causes that resulted in the separation of the Italian system and the blackout. In addition, issues related to the misoperation of the Italian automatic procedure to prevent the blackout are discussed.
131 citations
"Causes of the 2003 major grid black..." refers background in this paper
...Italian Blackout of September 28, 2003 [4], [5], [14]...
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...International Perspective and Recommendations [3]–[5], [9], [10], [15]...
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