Real-Time Stability Assessment in Modern Power System Control Centers

This book answers the need for a practical, hands-on guide for assessing power stability in real time, rather than in offline simulations. Since the book is primarily geared toward the practical aspects of the subject, theoretical background is reduced to the strictest minimum. For the benefit of readers who may not be quite familiar with the underlying theoretical techniques, appendices describing key algorithms and theoretical issues are included at the end of the book. It is an excellent source for researchers, professionals, and advanced undergraduate and graduate students.

Practical, hands-on techniques for assessing power system stability in real-time

In response to the growing trend for using online stability assessment to quickly tell how far a given operating state is from instability, this book presents in a single volume the state-of-the-art in this rapidly advancing field. It begins with a SCADA/EMS primer aimed at familiarizing readers with the real-time and study-mode data environments in modern control centers. These installations are quite sophisticated and offer superb application integration opportunities that were not available just a few years ago. This background is complemented with a brief review of the stability landscape from the real-time implementation perspective.

The subsequent material is clustered along the lines traditionally recognized in the industry—from steady-state stability, to transient stability, and to voltage stability. Within these clusters, each chapter describes actual solutions, emphasizes the particular challenges that were faced, shows how the problems were solved, and sheds light on the experimental results.

Because the book aims primarily at the practical aspects of implementing stability assessment in real-time, the space for theoretical background in each chapter was reduced to the strictest minimum. For the benefit of readers who may not be quite familiar with the underlying theoretical techniques, appendices that describe the key algorithms and theoretical issues directly related to the subject matter of the book are included. This is a valuable resource for students, researchers, and practitioners who are directly involved in the operating reliability of modern transmission systems.

Savu C. Savulescu, PhD, has more than thirty years of experience in computer engineering, utility operations, planning, and control. Currently CEO of Energy Consulting International, Inc., he has worked predominantly in the design and implementation of utility information systems, such as SCADA/EMS, and developed stability assessment software that is being used in real-time and off-line in the U.S., Europe, Latin America, and Asia. Dr. Savulescu has taught electric power systems and computer sciences at major universities in Belgium, Brazil, and the U.S.