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

减少电力生产对环境影响的社会压力导致加拿大电网上可变发电量大幅增加，特别是风力发电。例如，安大略的可再生能源标准报价方案和上网电价使得该省的风力发电装机容量超过3000兆瓦。这些变化有可能对电网运行的可靠性产生负面影响，特别是由于它们对电网运营商的态势感知（即，他们对系统当前状态和未来可能出现的问题的认识）。考虑到可能导致的灾难性后果（例如，缺乏态势感知是2003年8月美国和加拿大停电的根本原因，估计损失60亿美元，造成至少11人死亡）。增强电网态势感知，特别是考虑到与变量发电相关的挑战，是拟议的研究计划的主要目标。将解决的两个具体的短期目标是：（1）提高运营商对预测不确定性对未来电网条件的影响的理解（例如，系统电压和分支负载）以及（2）改进电网设备模型以使得能够精确评估瞬态稳定性。为了实现这些目标，我们将在几个关键领域建立我们的专业知识，包括：评估发电不确定性对网络可靠性的影响，模型识别和网格可视化。

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.