Petr Vorobev

Mile Mitrovic, Ognjen Kundacina, Aleksandr Lukashevich et al.

The Gaussian Process (GP) based Chance-Constrained Optimal Power Flow (CC-OPF) is an open-source Python code developed for solving economic dispatch (ED) problem in modern power grids. In recent years, integrating a significant amount of renewables into a power grid causes high fluctuations and thus brings a lot of uncertainty to power grid operations. This fact makes the conventional model-based CC-OPF problem non-convex and computationally complex to solve. The developed tool presents a novel data-driven approach based on the GP regression model for solving the CC-OPF problem with a trade-off between complexity and accuracy. The proposed approach and developed software can help system operators to effectively perform ED optimization in the presence of large uncertainties in the power grid.

Petr Vorobev, Po-Hsu Huang, Mohamed Al Hosani et al.

Proper modeling of inverter-based microgrids is crucial for accurate assessment of stability boundaries. It has been recently realized that the stability conditions for such microgrids are significantly different from those known for large- scale power systems. While detailed models are available, they are both computationally expensive and can not provide the insight into the instability mechanisms and factors. In this paper, a computationally efficient and accurate reduced-order model is proposed for modeling the inverter-based microgrids. The main factors affecting microgrid stability are analyzed using the developed reduced-order model and are shown to be unique for the microgrid-based network, which has no direct analogy to large-scale power systems. Particularly, it has been discovered that the stability limits for the conventional droop-based system (omega - P/V - Q) are determined by the ratio of inverter rating to network capacity, leading to a smaller stability region for microgrids with shorter lines. The theoretical derivation has been provided to verify the above investigation based on both the simplified and generalized network configurations. More impor- tantly, the proposed reduced-order model not only maintains the modeling accuracy but also enhances the computation efficiency. Finally, the results are verified with the detailed model via both frequency and time domain analyses.

Samuel Chevalier, Petr Vorobev, Konstantin Turitsyn

Locating the sources of forced low-frequency oscillations in power systems is an important problem. A number of proposed methods demonstrate their practical usefulness, but many of them rely on strong modeling assumptions and provide poor performance in certain cases for reasons still not well understood. This paper proposes a systematic method for locating the source of a forced oscillation by considering a generator's response to fluctuations of its terminal voltages and currents. It is shown that a generator can be represented as an effective admittance matrix with respect to low-frequency oscillations, and an explicit form for this matrix, for various generator models, is derived. Furthermore, it is shown that a source generator, in addition to its effective admittance, is characterized by the presence of an effective current source thus giving a natural qualitative distinction between source and nonsource generators. Detailed descriptions are given of a source detection procedure based on this developed representation, and the method's effectiveness is confirmed by simulations on the recommended testbeds (eg. WECC 179-bus system). This method is free of strong modeling assumptions and is also shown to be robust in the presence of measurement noise and generator parameter uncertainty.

Samuel Chevalier, Petr Vorobev, Konstantin Turitsyn

Since forced oscillations are exogenous to dynamic power system models, the models by themselves cannot predict when or where a forced oscillation will occur. Locating the sources of these oscillations, therefore, is a challenging problem which requires analytical methods capable of using real time power system data to trace an observed oscillation back to its source. The difficulty of this problem is exacerbated by the fact that the parameters associated with a given power system model can range from slightly uncertain to entirely unknown. In this paper, a Bayesian framework, via a two-stage Maximum A Posteriori optimization routine, is employed in order to locate the most probable source of a forced oscillation given an uncertain prior model. The approach leverages an equivalent circuit representation of the system in the frequency domain and employs a numerical procedure which makes the problem suitable for real time application. The derived framework lends itself to successful performance in the presence of PMU measurement noise, high generator parameter uncertainty, and multiple forced oscillations occurring simultaneously. The approach is tested on a 4-bus system with a single forced oscillation source and on the WECC 179-bus system with multiple oscillation sources.

Mile Mitrovic, Aleksandr Lukashevich, Petr Vorobev et al.

In recent years, electricity generation has been responsible for more than a quarter of the greenhouse gas emissions in the US. Integrating a significant amount of renewables into a power grid is probably the most accessible way to reduce carbon emissions from power grids and slow down climate change. Unfortunately, the most accessible renewable power sources, such as wind and solar, are highly fluctuating and thus bring a lot of uncertainty to power grid operations and challenge existing optimization and control policies. The chance-constrained alternating current (AC) optimal power flow (OPF) framework finds the minimum cost generation dispatch maintaining the power grid operations within security limits with a prescribed probability. Unfortunately, the AC-OPF problem's chance-constrained extension is non-convex, computationally challenging, and requires knowledge of system parameters and additional assumptions on the behavior of renewable distribution. Known linear and convex approximations to the above problems, though tractable, are too conservative for operational practice and do not consider uncertainty in system parameters. This paper presents an alternative data-driven approach based on Gaussian process (GP) regression to close this gap. The GP approach learns a simple yet non-convex data-driven approximation to the AC power flow equations that can incorporate uncertainty inputs. The latter is then used to determine the solution of CC-OPF efficiently, by accounting for both input and parameter uncertainty. The practical efficiency of the proposed approach using different approximations for GP-uncertainty propagation is illustrated over numerous IEEE test cases.

Samuel Chevalier, Petr Vorobev, Konstantin Turitsyn et al.

Despite wide-scale deployment of phasor measurement unit technology, locating the sources of low frequency forced oscillations in power systems is still an open research topic. The dissipating energy flow method is one source location technique which has performed remarkably well in both simulation and real time application at ISO New England. The method has several deficiencies, though, which are still poorly understood. This paper borrows the concepts of passivity and positive realness from the controls literature in order to interpret the dissipating energy flow method, pinpoint the reasons for its deficiencies, and set up a framework for improving the method. The theorems presented in this paper are then tested via simulation on a simple infinite bus power system model.

Kathleen Cavanagh, Petr Vorobev, Konstantin Turitsyn

DC grids are prone to small-signal instabilities due to the presence of tightly controlled loads trying to keep the power consumption constant over range of terminal voltage variations. Th, so-called, constant power load (CPL) represents a classical example of this destabilizing behavior acting as an incremental negative resistance. Real-life DC loads represented by controlled power converters exhibit the CPL behavior over a finite frequency range. There exist a number of methods for stability certification of DC grids which are primarily concerned with the source-load interaction and do not explicitly account for the influence of network. In the present manuscript, we develop a method for stability assessment of arbitrary DC grids by introducing the Augmented Power Dissipation and showing that it's positive definiteness is a sufficient condition for stability. We present an explicit expression for this quantity through load and network impedances and show how it could be directly used for stability certification of networks with arbitrary configuration.

Mile Mitrovic, Aleksandr Lukashevich, Petr Vorobev et al.

The alternating current (AC) chance-constrained optimal power flow (CC-OPF) problem addresses the economic efficiency of electricity generation and delivery under generation uncertainty. The latter is intrinsic to modern power grids because of the high amount of renewables. Despite its academic success, the AC CC-OPF problem is highly nonlinear and computationally demanding, which limits its practical impact. For improving the AC-OPF problem complexity/accuracy trade-off, the paper proposes a fast data-driven setup that uses the sparse and hybrid Gaussian processes (GP) framework to model the power flow equations with input uncertainty. We advocate the efficiency of the proposed approach by a numerical study over multiple IEEE test cases showing up to two times faster and more accurate solutions compared to the state-of-the-art methods.

Mile Mitrovic, Dmitry Titov, Klim Volkhov et al.

As a new practical and economical solution to the aging problem of overhead line (OHL) assets, the technical policies of most power grid companies in the world experienced a gradual transition from scheduled preventive maintenance to a risk-based approach in asset management. Even though the accumulation of contamination is predictable within a certain degree, there are currently no effective ways to identify the risk of the insulator flashover in order to plan its replacement. This paper presents a novel machine learning (ML) based method for estimating the flashover probability of the cup-and-pin glass insulator string. The proposed method is based on the Extreme Gradient Boosting (XGBoost) supervised ML model, in which the leakage current (LC) features and applied voltage are used as the inputs. The established model can estimate the critical flashover voltage (U50%) for various designs of OHL insulators with different voltage levels. The proposed method is also able to accurately determine the condition of the insulator strings and instruct asset management engineers to take appropriate actions.