The Fragile Grid: The Physics and Economics of Security Services in Low-Carbon Power Systems

Mancarella, Pierluigi; Billimoria, Farhad

doi:10.1109/mpe.2020.3043570

Cited by 22 publications

(10 citation statements)

References 3 publications

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“…New important techno‐economic challenges that are emerging are associated with inherent difficulties in dealing with complex physical system requirements—and then market products—in low‐carbon grids with increasing shares of PECs, but still with a large presence of synchronous machines. These difficulties in dealing with the “new physics” of low‐carbon grids justify the so‐called “bottom‐up” approach “from physics to economics” to define new market and regulatory requirements, services and products (Billimoria et al, 2020; Mancarella & Billimoria, 2021). Examples of such issues are: difficulty in defining physical features of low‐carbon grids (e.g., “system strength” is related to network impedance, voltage/reactive power control, synchronizing torque, inertia, and short‐circuit current—it is not straightforward to even “define” in a clear but comprehensive manner); inseparability of certain services (e.g., a synchronous generator provides fault current, but also inevitably inertia, thus affecting other markets/products); integrality constraints (e.g., an SC can only provide none, or all, of its inertia and fault‐current capacity when off or on, respectively, thus leading to “binary” or “integer” service provision that is not easy to incorporate within market solution algorithms); non‐intuitive stability characteristics of complex hybrid (continuous‐discrete) dynamical systems (e.g., synchronous and PEC‐based technologies); and difficulty in defining whether all security services are actually “public goods,” as historically thought, or whether some of them may have different economic properties (e.g., provision and access to some services may become increasingly “contentious” due to system congestion).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Power system stability in the transition to a low carbon grid: A techno‐economic perspective on challenges and opportunities

Meegahapola

Mancarella

Flynn

et al. 2021

WIREs Energy & Environment

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Increasing power system stability challenges are being witnessed worldwide, while transitioning toward low‐carbon grids with a high‐share of power electronic converter (PEC)‐interfaced renewable energy sources (RESs) and distributed energy resources (DERs). Concurrently, new technologies and operational strategies are being implemented or proposed to tackle these challenges. Since electricity grids are deregulated in many jurisdictions, such technologies need to be integrated within a market framework, which is often a challenge in itself due to inevitable regulatory delays in updating grid codes and market rules. It is also highly desirable to ensure that an economically feasible optimal technology mix is integrated in the power system, without imposing additional burdens on electricity consumers. This article provides a comprehensive overview of emerging power system stability challenges posed by PEC‐interfaced RES and DER, particularly related to low inertia and low system strength conditions, while also introducing new technologies that can help tackle these challenges and discussing the need for suitable techno‐economic considerations to integrate them into system and market operation. As a key point, the importance of recognizing the complexity of system services to guarantee stability in low‐carbon grids is emphasized, along with the need to carefully integrate new grid codes and market mechanisms in order to exploit the full benefits of emerging technologies in the transition toward ultra‐low carbon futures. This article is categorized under: Energy Systems Economics > Economics and Policy Energy Systems Analysis > Systems and Infrastructure Energy and Development > Systems and Infrastructure

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Power system stability in the transition to a low carbon grid: A techno‐economic perspective on challenges and opportunities

Meegahapola

Mancarella

Flynn

et al. 2021

WIREs Energy & Environment

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“…Low and variable rotational inertia poses a challenge to grid frequency stability because a large disturbance from the nominal frequency can trigger frequency-dependent load shedding and other protection schemes. The triggering of protection schemes ultimately causes cascading failures that could result in a system-wide blackout [2], [4], [6].…”

Section: A Motivationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Distributed Frequency Control in Power Grids with Low and Time-Varying Inertia

Muralidharan¹,

Kleissl²,

Hidalgo-Gonzalez³

2022

Preprint

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This paper presents a distributed frequency control method for power grids with high penetration of inverterconnected resources under low and time-varying inertia due to renewable energy (RE). We provide a distributed virtual inertia (VI) allocation method using the distributed subgradient algorithm. We implement our distributed control strategy under full and sparse communication architectures. The distributed full and sparse communication controllers achieve comparable performance to a centralized controller and stabilize the test system within 6 s. We study the sensitivity of the controller performance to varying objective function weights on phase angle versus frequency deviation, gradient step sizes, and allowed rate of change of inertia (RoCoI) coefficients. We observe that the settling time of the states and the controller performance and effort are susceptible to changes in the gradient step size and objective weights on the frequency and angle deviation. While a higher objective weight on angle versus frequency deviations positively affects their settling times, it negatively impacts controller performance and control effort. The impact of this work is to propose distributed control schemes as new mechanisms that act before or in alignment with primary and secondary control to safely regulate the frequency in future power grids.

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“…ctive distribution networks (ADNs) with many inverterbased resources (IBRs) are potential candidates for the provision of flexibility and system services. These will be more needed in low-carbon grids that may be prone to frequency instability under low-inertia conditions [1][2] and to voltage instability at weak grid connections due to reduction in short-circuit level [3]. Most previous works have focused on the capabilities of inverter-based technologies (e.g., photovoltaic (PV) units [4], battery energy storage systems [5][6]) in providing voltage/reactive and frequency/active dynamic supports in transmission systems [4][5][6] or DC/AC micro-grids [7].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…With regard to small-signal analysis (e.g., up to 1-2 Hz frequency oscillations following generation/load outage/shedding in conventional power systems [20], which may be even larger in low-inertia future grids [2]), this work investigates the potential benefits in frequency response from IBRs. Moreover, we mathematically discuss how this frequency response may result in voltage violations due to low system strength.…”

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confidence: 99%