Seminar Series Spring 2020

Fault-Resilient Power Systems Using a System of Systems Protection Strategy

Overview

The heavier loading of existing power systems infrastructure along with the utilization of significant amounts of renewable energy sources pose new challenges to the power systems real-time operational security, defined by NERC as the ability of electric power grids to withstand sudden, unexpected disturbances such as short circuit faults. Therefore, developing secure and dependable protection schemes ranging from digital protection algorithms to wide area protection schemes that enhance real-time operational security and fault-tolerance of power systems is of crucial need, as they would translate to several billions of dollars in annual savings in the U.S. alone.

This talk first presents a brief overview of our System of Systems (SoS) approach for addressing new challenges of protection of modern cyber-physical power systems with high penetration of inverter interfaced renewable energy sources. The proposed protection and emergency control strategies are implemented at multiple timescales and are deployed at different locations spanning from the interface of inverter interfaced renewable energy sources (milliseconds timescale), to digital protective relays distributed throughout the power grid (fractions of a second timescale) and wide area protection systems at control centers (seconds to minutes timescale).

The talk then discusses a cascading failure protection strategy, consisting of digital protection algorithms and Special Protection Systems (SPS), that enhances power systems fault tolerance and resilience against cascading failures.

Bio

Dr. Saeed Lotfifard is an assistant professor in the school of electrical engineering and computer science at Washington State University. He received his Ph.D. degree in electrical engineering from Texas A&M University in 2011. His research interests include power systems protection, control and fault resilient integrated AC-DC power grids. Dr. Lotfifard is a senior member of IEEE and serves as an Editor for the IEEE Transactions on Smart Grid and IEEE Transactions on Sustainable Energy.

Reliability Evaluation of Renewable Generation Integrated Power Grid Including Adequacy and Dynamic Security Assessment

Overview

The growing penetration of variable renewable sources and the competitive power system environment make the application of probabilistic reliability techniques all the more important. Although probabilistic methods have been widely used in resource adequacy assessment, using probabilistic methodologies for reliability evaluation including system dynamic security need to be investigated. This work proposes a probabilistic methodology for integrated reliability evaluation considering resource adequacy and dynamic security assessment in a unified framework. Sequential Monte-Carlo Simulation (SMCS) is chosen because of its ability to consider time varying sequential characteristics. By using an optimization model, which minimizes load curtailment for adequacy assessment, and representing stability preserving protection systems in security assessment, the proposed approach gives quantitative integrated reliability evaluation results. In addition, two acceleration methods are introduced to improve computational efficiency. The proposed approach is demonstrated on a synthetic test system and the results illustrate the efficacy of an integrated reliability evaluation approach.

Bio

Vijay Vittal received the B.E. degree in electrical engineering from the B.M.S. College of Engineering, Bengaluru, India, in 1977, the M.Tech. degree from the Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur, Kanpur, India, in 1979, and the Ph.D. degree from Iowa State University, Ames, IA, USA, in 1982. From 1982 -2005 he was on the faculty of the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Iowa State University. He joined Arizona State University in 2005. He is a Regents’ Professor and the Ira A. Fulton Chair Professor with the Department of Electrical, Computer and Energy Engineering, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ, USA. He is currently the Director of the Power Systems Engineering Research Center, Arizona State University. He is a member of the National Academy of Engineering.

Cyber Risk Analysis and Threat Mitigation Strategies Agains DER and IoT Infrastructure Attacks

Overview

The talk addresses challenges related to the future state estimation of power systems. The state estimator provides situational awareness for operators at the control center and is exploited in many energy management system (EMS) operations. The presentation shows the challenges related to the integration of phasor measurement units (PMUs) in the static state estimator. The goal is to improve the accuracy of the estimation by exploiting PMU data. Cyber-security vulnerabilities that could be introduced in both the measurements and the topology of the grid are assessed on both the classical and the hybrid PMU-based SE. Power system model based solutions are proposed against cyber-attacks. The robustness is introduced by exploiting robust statistical signal processing and machine learning techniques. Finally, a robust dynamic state estimator that could ensure a high breakdown for large power systems is introduced.

Bio

Yacine Chakhchoukh (M’10) received his PhD in electrical engineering from Paris-Sud XI University, Paris, France, in 2010. He conducted research at Technical University Darmstadt, Darmstadt, Germany, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ, USA, and the Tokyo Institute of Technology, Tokyo, Japan. His industrial experience was with the French Electrical Transmission System Operator (RTE-EDF, France). Currently, Dr. Chakhchoukh is an Assistant Professor at the University of Idaho, Moscow, ID. His research interests are cyber and physical security for the smart grid, power systems control and

Oscillation Monitoring and Control of the RTE Power System Using Synchrophasors

Overview

This talk addresses methods for monitoring and mitigating problematic oscillations in electric power grids by using wide-area synchronized measurements. We will focus on a recent WSU project in which we studied oscillation phenomena in the French (RTE) portion of the European power. Oscillation monitoring algorithms developed at WSU will be illustrated for the analysis of two recent major oscillation events in the RTE power system. Data from Phasor Measurement Units (PMUs) collected during the events are analyzed by using ambient and ringdown model estimation tools. Fast Frequency Domain Decomposition (FFDD) and Covariance-based Fast Stochastic Subspace Identification (FSSI-Cov) are applied for ambient model analysis.

Analysis of these two events shows the relative strengths and weaknesses of different oscillation monitoring algorithms and their usefulness in measurement-based modal analysis of large system events. In the second part, the problem of clustering of estimates from an ambient oscillation monitoring algorithm into groupings of different system mode estimates will be discussed. Mitigating the mechanism of each mode or forced oscillation requires a specific remedial action and the mode estimates should be properly clustered and identified before such corrective actions can be determined. Oscillation monitoring and clustering algorithms will be illustrated on actual PMU data and estimates from the RTE power system.

Bio

Mohammadreza Maddipour Farrokhifard is a Ph.D. Candidate in the school of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at WSU. He received his MS degree in electrical engineering from Sharif University of Technology (2013). His research interests include power systems dynamics, PMU-based applications, and renewable energies. Maddipour is a member of IEEE and serves as a reviewer for numerous journals such as IEEE Transactions on Power Systems. He was awarded Outstanding Contributor in Reviewing by International Journal of Electrical Power and Energy Systems and was a recipient of the best project poster award of a PSERC IAB meeting. Maddipour also serves as the industry projects manager of Synchrophasor Analytics and Intelligence Laboratory (SAIL) at WSU.

The Role of Big Data Analytics in Predicting Power System Outages

Overview

The topic of Big Data and associated analytics is relatively new (last 15 years). It became prominent as the huge amounts of data became available
through the space exploration, weather forecasting and medical biogenetic investigations. Social media and outlets such as Google, YouTube,
Facebook, Amazon and others have also faced similar problems of handling huge data sets. The power systems are now experiencing huge amount
of data obtained through field measurements and external sources such as variety of weather data. This talk focuses on the role of Big Data analytics
in managing and controlling future power system by predicting power system outages at different time horizons.

The initial discussion is about features if the different data sources that range from field measurements obtained through substation/feeder intelligent
electronic devices to other data sets obtained from specialized commercial and/or government/state databases: weather data of different types,
lightning detection data, seismic data, fire detection data, electricity market data, vegetation data, historical outage data, etc. It then points out that
due to the massive amount of such data (petabytes) available in real time and through historical records, processing and management of such data
requires revisiting data analytics used to correlate data and extract features already developed in the Big Data industries such as banking, insurance
and health care. This talk ends with examples how the Big Data analytics are recently used to successfully predict transmission and distribution
faults.

Bio

Dr. Mladen Kezunovic is the Regents Professor and Eugene E. Webb endowed Professor at Texas A&M University, USA where he has been employed since 1986. He serves in several leading roles at the university: Site Director, PSerc, and Director, Power Systems Control and Protection Lab. He is also the Principal Consultant, as well as President and CEO of XpertPowerTM Associates, which has been providing consulting services for utility industry for over 25 years. He worked for Westinghouse Electric in the U.S.A. as a Systems Engineer on developing the first all-digital substation design during 1979-1980 and for Energoinvest Company in Europe as the Technical Lead for substation automation development during 1980-86. He was a consultant for EdF’s Research Centre in Clamart, France in 1999-2000 and a Visiting Professor at the University of Hong Kong in fall of 2009. He was an Eminent Scholar at the Texas A&M University-Qatar in 2015/2016 and Special Visiting Researcher in Brazil in 2015-2017. He also acted as a consultant to over 50 utilities and vendors worldwide, and served three terms (2209-2013) as a Director on the Board of Directors of the Smart Grid Interoperability Panel (SGIP) representing research organizations and universities. He was recently appointed by the US Secretary of Energy to serve 2nd term on the Electricity Advisory Committee for the Department of Energy.

Dr. Kezunovic was a Principal Investigator on over 120 R&D projects, published more than 600 papers, two books and five book chapters, and gave over 120 invited lectures, short courses and seminars around the world. He is an IEEE Life Fellow and Distinguished Speaker, CIGRE Fellow, Honorary, and Distinguished Member, and Registered Professional Engineer in Texas. He is the recipient of the Inaugural 2011 IEEE Educational Activities Board Standards Education Award “for educating students and engineers about the importance and benefits of interoperability standards” and CIGRE Technical Committee Award for “remarkable technical contribution to the study committee B5, protection and automation” in 2013. He has received recognition from IEEE PSRC for 25 years of distinguished service.

Enhancing Power State Estimation Accuracy and Cyber-Security in the Smart Grid

Overview

The talk addresses challenges related to the future state estimation of power systems. The state estimator provides situational awareness for operators at the control center and is exploited in many energy management system (EMS) operations. The presentation shows the challenges related to the integration of phasor measurement units (PMUs) in the static state estimator. The goal is to improve the accuracy of the estimation by exploiting PMU data. Cyber-security vulnerabilities that could be introduced in both the measurements and the topology of the grid are assessed on both the classical and the hybrid PMU-based SE. Power system model based solutions are proposed against cyber-attacks. The robustness is introduced by exploiting robust statistical signal processing and machine learning techniques. Finally, a robust dynamic state estimator that could ensure a high breakdown for large power systems is introduced.

Bio

Yacine Chakhchoukh (M’10) received his PhD in electrical engineering from Paris-Sud XI University, Paris, France, in 2010. He conducted research at Technical University Darmstadt, Darmstadt, Germany, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ, USA, and the Tokyo Institute of Technology, Tokyo, Japan. His industrial experience was with the French Electrical Transmission System Operator (RTE-EDF, France). Currently, Dr. Chakhchoukh is an Assistant Professor at the University of Idaho, Moscow, ID. His research interests are cyber and physical security for the smart grid, power systems control and analysis. In 2017, he received the IEEE SPS Signal Processing Magazine best paper award.