Skip to main content
SHARE
Research Highlight

Eye on the Grid: System monitoring increases power grid reliability

Grid monitoring
Correlating real-time measurements with corresponding geographical information, FNET/GridEye presents an intuitive visualization tool that helps operators interpret what happens in the power grid in real time.

In August 2003, an alarm system failed to warn workers at an Ohio electric utility of a minor problem with a single high-voltage power line, so the workers didn’t respond immediately. This combination of human error and equipment failure had a cascading effect on the electric grid that led to a massive blackout in the Northeastern United States and Canada—affecting some 50 million people, costing an estimated $6 billion, and contributing to at least 11 deaths.

The blackout illustrates the vulnerability of a system upon which we depend heavily. One of the key research projects of the Electrical and Electronics Systems Research Division (EESR) Power and Energy Systems Group is the development of a power grid monitoring system to improve grid reliability and resiliency and, at the same time, enable the integration of more renewable energy sources. Renewables are important generators of power but can negatively affect grid reliability because they are not available on demand—wind power is available only when the wind blows, and solar power is available only when the sun shines.

Yilu Liu, University of Tennessee (UT)–ORNL Governor’s Chair for Power Grids, said the low-cost system—the Electrical Grid Frequency Monitoring Network, or FNET/GridEye—is a tool for power grid situational awareness from the distribution level. It offers more complete coverage and provides continuous, real-time grid monitoring, unlike other individual patches of grid monitoring systems at high-voltage substations. And it does so more precisely than and for a fraction of the cost of other systems.

“For the first time, we can observe the power grid behavior clearly throughout the entire grid,” Liu said. “It enables us to understand the power grid performance during disturbance and stress.”

FNET/GridEye’s wide-area measurement network uses GPS technology to piece together data; researchers use that information to evaluate power grid status during normal and abnormal conditions. FNET/GridEye also supports cybersecurity research such as measurement signal authentication and tampering detection.

FNET/GridEye’s first unit was deployed in 2004, and the system was expanded in 2009 once it was moved to ORNL/UT (it previously was located at Virginia Tech). It is now collecting data across the globe. Going forward, the project will include deployment of more units for higher-resolution measurement and continued analysis of the data collected since 2004.

In addition to Liu and EESR’s Joe Gracia, Tom King, and Aleks Dimitrovski, the research team includes collaborators from UT, the Tennessee Valley Authority, ABB, Dominion Resources, MISO Energy, North American Electric Reliability Corporation, and more than 20 other organizations and industry members.