Drivers of change in the North American electric grid

Mohapatra, Saurav

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https://hdl.handle.net/2142/31043 Copy

Description

Title

Drivers of change in the North American electric grid

Author(s)

Mohapatra, Saurav

Issue Date

2012-05-22T00:24:02Z

Director of Research (if dissertation) or Advisor (if thesis)

Overbye, Thomas J.

Department of Study

Electrical & Computer Eng

Discipline

Electrical & Computer Engr

Degree Granting Institution

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Degree Name

M.S.

Degree Level

Thesis

Keyword(s)

• Frequency disturbance
• electromechanical disturbance
• disturbance propagation
• time delay
• power imbalance
• wide-area governor response
• transient stability
• reactive power
• voltage support
• renewable energy
• energy storage
• smart devices
• controllable power sources

Abstract

In the first part of this thesis, background material will be covered to motivate the research ideas being pursued in relation to electromechanical disturbance propagation, which is caused by an imbalance in power supply and demand at any location of an electric grid. The delay associated with this phenomenon is generally observed in large-scale interconnected power systems, and the impact of large changes in load or generation can be felt over a wide geographic area. A high penetration of solar and wind resources will tend to add more variability in generation, but also decrease the ratio between the total spinning inertia and power being produced. For the same amount of power imbalance, a larger frequency deviation will be observed in a system with higher renewable penetration. To understand the crux of this phenomenon, a relatively small 9-bus system is introduced. Transient analysis is carried out using non-linear and linear models to simulate a fault that causes a sudden disturbance to the power balance at one of the buses. Visualization of the transient response is provided, and a comparison of the time delays associated with the electromechanical disturbance propagation is presented for the 9-bus system. In the second part of this thesis, a literature review of utility-scale energy storage devices is presented, which have a symbiotic relationship with the integration of renewables to balance real power supply. Also, the aggregate effect of smart devices at the residential level is evaluated towards reactive power voltage support. These smart devices are becoming more common, and many of them already possess the hardware and software capabilities to implement reactive power injection control. In the near future, such devices would be dispersed over a large portion of the electric distribution network, thus making distributed reactive voltage support feasible. Network-level benefits of such a scheme are presented using a PowerWorld simulation. Applications are discussed, and a proposed control framework is simulated in Simulink for a single smart device.

Graduation Semester

2012-05

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http://hdl.handle.net/2142/31043

Copyright and License Information

Copyright 2012 Saurav Mohapatra

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