Enhancing the Situational Awareness of Power Grid Operators under High Penetration of Variable Generation

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Societal pressure to reduce the environmental impacts of electricity production has led to a dramatic increase in the amount of variable generation on Canada's power grids, particularly wind generation. For example, Ontario's Renewable Energy Standard Offer Program and Feed-In Tariff have led to an installed wind generation capacity of over 3000 MW within the province. These changes have the potential to negatively impact the reliability of grid operations, particularly due to their detrimental impact on power grid operators' situational awareness (i.e., their awareness of the current state of the system and of future problems that might arise). The importance of situational awareness is hard to overstate, given the catastrophic consequences that may result (e.g., lack of situational awareness was a root cause of the August 2003 blackout in the U.S. and Canada, which cost an estimated $6 billion and contributed to at least 11 deaths). Enhancing power grid situational awareness, with particular consideration of the challenges associated with variable generation, is the main goal of the proposed research program. Two specific short term goals that will be addressed are: (1) improve operators' understanding of the impact that forecast uncertainties have on future grid conditions (e.g., system voltages and branch loading) and (2) improve grid device models to enable accurate assessment of transient stability. To achieve these goals, we will build upon our expertise in several key areas, including: evaluating the impact of generation uncertainty on network reliability, model identification, and grid visualization.**