Project Details
Power electronics offer improved efficiency and grid controllability, but their potential roles on grid resiliency have not been tapped and utilized so far. With continually increasing penetration of inverter-based generations, loads, HVDC and FACTS, one scenario of 100% power electronics-based power grid, aka All Power Electronics Grid (APEG), will become possible sometime in the future. Researchers and utilities in Europe have started to study the issues and operation challenges, while North America is left behind on this early-stage research.
The objectives of this project are to investigate the dynamic grid modeling and operations of the APEG scenario. A major challenge is the secure and stable operation of APEG without synchronous machines, which requires a different thinking of analysis and control methodologies from conventional practices. Dynamic system modeling problems will need to be defined in the extended harmonic domain and studied to propose new system control strategies while operating such a grid, e.g. how to ensure system adequacy and security when there is no longer an inherent physics between power balance and system frequency. The causes of system instability are likely to be different from the existing systems, so system-wide stability analysis will be investigated, and new stabilization approaches will be applied. Subsequently, new operational, management and market rules, e.g. related to reserve provision, and requirements for grid-forming controllers will be defined for the APEG to be economically and efficiently robust and secure for normal conditions, and resilient for critical fault scenarios and extreme natural events.
The outcomes of this work will be not only to establish the modeling and operation principles of the proposed APEG system, but also to develop the best practices for grid architecture design for resilience, which can be constructive for currently evolving U.S. power grid to improve the resilience.
