Power system operation and Control

(Basics, SCADA, EMS) Prof. S. Shahnawaz Ahmed

For subsequent materials assistance taken mainly from :

1. Antonio Gomez-Expostio, Antonio J. Conejo and Claudio Canizares, “Electric Energy Systems Analysis and
Operation”, CRC Presss, New York, 2018.

2. W.A.Elmore, “Pilot Protective Relaying”, ABB-Marcel Dekker Inc., 2000.

3. Janaka Ekanayake, Kithsiri Liyanage, Jianzhong Wu, Akihiko Yokoyama and Nick Jenkins, Smart Grid:
Technology and Applications, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., UK, First Edition, 2012.

4. The Electric Power Engineering Handbook, edited by Leonard L. Grigsby, CRC Press, NY, 3rd Edition, 2012.

5. Jan Machowski, Janusz W. Bialek and James R. Bumby: Power System Dynamics Stability and Control, John
Wiley & Sons, Ltd, UK, 2020.

6. S. Shahnawaz Ahmed: Power System Operation and Control, a handout, May 2022.

7. Contemporary URLs
 Background
•Availability of commercially viable and ‘quality’ electrical energy in a bulk quantum is the basic need for
the survival and evolution of the modern civilization. This is because electrical energy is the most convenient
one for generation, transmission, distribution, consumption, storage and control.

•The phrase ‘quality’ refers to a target that electricity be delivered to the end users without exceeding the
allowed limits in voltage deviation, frequency drift, wave shape distortion (i.e. deviation from pure sine wave)
and outage. Typical values of these limits are respectively set at 5%, 1%, 5% and only 32 seconds/year (i.e.
99.9999% availability) in the context of today’s world.

•Power System: This is a system where a plethora of generation (G), transmission (T), distribution (D) and
utilization (i.e. consumption and storage) apparatus, and measurement, control, protection and monitoring
devices are so interconnected that it becomes possible to bring power from distant and dispersed generation
units with fuel diversity (fossil fuel, nuclear, hydro, renewable) and deliver it in a bulk quantum with quality
and economy to the consumers who use appliances of diverse nature ranging from low tech to high tech.

•The planning, design and operation of a power system requires a knowledge of its main control functions .
BPS SLD as of March 2022
 •Since the inception in the late nineteenth century (around the year 1880) power systems have been traditionally built
in a vertically integrated form comprising generation, transmission and distribution facilities owned and operated by
the same entity.

•Since the late twentieth century (around 1996) a concept termed

‘restructuring’/’deregulation’/’unbundling’ evolved across the world starting from California of USA. This concept
was the brainchild of primarily the economists. This resulted in separate owners and operators for the three sectors to
pave the way for competition in the generation sector (i.e. many generation entities) and creation of ‘electricity
market’ from where the distribution agencies will buy electricity at volatile spot price and/or under long term bilateral
contracts.

•Needless to say , the operation and control objectives and schemes for a restructured power system differs to some
extent from those for a vertically integrated one because of the differences in the interests of the owners of the three
primary sectors (G, T, D).

Smart grid concept

•Since the early twenty first century (around 2007), a new vision termed ‘smart grid’ was floated mainly by the public
bodies and regulators of electricity utilities in the North America against the backdrop of several incidents of massive
blackouts that occurred in USA and Europe in the years 2003 and 2004.

•The smart grid reality is still in the stage of evolution; however, it stems from an idea that the large power grids
interconnecting bulk and centralized power plants across the world are ‘aging’ and hence a potential solution could be
to make the system self-healing in the event of blackouts through embedding (i) distributed small-scale generation
resources including renewable sources, (ii) plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (that use high power density rechargeable
alkaline batteries) and (iii) smart appliances (self- responsive to system condition) at the consumer end all of which can
be communicated by the grid or distribution system control centre via a building EMS or a smart meter utilizing the
available distributed communication media such as cell phone network, internet, broadband wireless systems such as
WiMAX, fiber optic networks, and power line carriers (PLC).
•In brief DERs (Distributed Energy Resources including storage devices), two way communication and DR (Demand
Response) are the conspicuous features of a smart grid.

http://sensorweb.cs.gsu.edu/?q=EnergyWeb
(Real-time price signal)

Vision for a smart grid city

 Integrated gasification combined cycle
Carbon Capture and Storage

Why power system control is so important?

The answer is very simple.

•People are more demanding regarding electricity compared to other services.

•It is the people’s expectation that whenever they switch on an electrical device it should get supply.

•They are not ready to hear “electricity network is busy” unlike the patience they show to entertain a message:
Telephone/ cell phone network is now busy.
EMS
Source: 1.Power Eng. Handbook, CRC Press, NY,
Source 2:Jan Machowski , Janusz W. Bialek and James R. Bumby :
POWER SYSTEM DYNAMICS Stability and Control, John Wiley & Source:3. Antonio Gomez -Expostio, Antonio J. Conejo and Claudio Canizares ,
Sons, Ltd, UK,. “Electric Energy Systems Analysis and Operation”, CRC Presss, New York,
 in substations, power stations

RTU cubicles

State estimation: cleans up acquired data

from random noise and gross errors

AGC: secondary control of frequency

from area (regional) control centre taking
into account load change, tie line flows and
generation dispatches

Optimal power flow: dispatches Source:1

generators to minimize generation cost
taking into account line loss, voltage and
Most of the applications are executed in real time i.e.
line flow limits require repetition at few seconds to few minutes,
using on-line data.
Basics of typical Power system control:

•First load is forecasted for next 24 hours

•then it is decided which generation units be committed

in each interval or an hour

• and how much power should economically be

dispatched from each of the committed units.

•The decision goes to what is known as Automatic

Generation Control (AGC) that maintains the frequency
at the desired value.

•If needed a security analysis is done in advance to

avert the adverse impacts of Forecasting the
demand: a sample case probable severe
contingencies. This requires altering
the current operating condition of
a system based on the decisions
obtained by running another tool “Optimal Power Flow” giving priority to security rather than to economy.
Generator’s Control for frequency and Voltage

Source 2
 Source: 3
•In a power system with increase in demand the frequency and voltage both decreases and vice versa.

The frequency can be restored partially by the primary (local) action of generator-turbine
governor (i.e. local control by each unit or plant)
 while complete return to the normal value is possible by the secondary control (e.g. AGC)
exercised by the Area Control Centre. If necessary other secondary actions such as real
power balancing, load shedding are also exercised by the area or regional control centres.

In a large interconnected system tertiary control (if needed) is exercised by the National
Load Dispatch Center that resets the reference values of power for individual generating
units to the values calculated by optimal dispatch in such a way that the overall demand
is satisfied together with the schedule of power interchanges.

The voltage can be restored by the primary or local control from AVR of each generation
unit and if necessary by transformer tap changing, capacitor switching at substations.
However, secondary control is not always necessary but if needed secondary control such as
coordinated reactive power dispatching, load shedding etc. is exercised from area control
centres.
 Basic structure of SCADA

Various communication links used in SCADA

Source: Electric Power Distribution
System Engineering by Turan
Gӧnen
Combination of radial (star) and
multi-point (party line) master-RTU
network

Hierarchical control of power system

A typical layout of SCADA control centre
WAMPAC: Wide Area Monitoring, Protection and Control system is another advanced variant of EMS that uses only
PMUs .
WAMPAC can help visualize synchronous generators ‘ relative oscillations and hence enable controlled separation
of a large system in case instability is likely to occur.
SCADA vs. SAS

SCADA reflects a central monitoring concept with client-server

configuration covering RTUs /IEDs /PMUs at many substations and
power stations as clients being hooked up with a server (termed EMS)
at a central location.

•SAS (Substation Automation System) provides protection, control, automation, monitoring,

and communication capabilities as a part of a comprehensive
substation control and monitoring solution. This reflects a data
acquisition, monitoring and control system confined only within a
specific substation. It operates independently of EMS and may be
connected to send data to EMS also. At the same substation SAS and
RTUs of SCADA may exist independently.

Data base

Data base incorporates comprehensive information about the system. The information can broadly be
classified into three groups such as:
i) on- line data from the RTUs; ii) fixed data entered through man-machine interface; iii)output of state
estimator and other application programs.

The emerging trend is to connect the EMS database with a the GIS (Geographical Information System) server.
GIS maps and locates all the resources at supply and demand end with geographical coordinates. This can
also display the real time status and operational quantities of the feeders and consumers’ service lines.
State Estimator

• The raw telemetered data received from the RTUs is mainly corrupted by two types of errors- random
measurement noise and gross error i.e. bad data.

•The first type of error mainly results from current and potential transformer errors, transducer (meter)
inaccuracies, analog to digital conversion, noise in communication channels or interference noise.

•Gross error mainly results from faults or failures in metering and communication system.

•State estimator cleans up the raw data using a redundant set of on-line measurements through a statistical criterion.

Security : monitor, analyze contingencies and take SCOPF based actions

 Typical classification of power system
security related states

Load Forecasting

• Load forecasting is the prediction of

future electricity demand by using some
statistical techniques or machine
learning tools such as regression or
ANN to adjust past demands to present
weather conditions and other anticipated
events.

•For control purpose a short term

forecasting is done usually once a day or
every hour or few hours (depending
upon system dynamics e.g. change in
demanded MW/minute) to develop an
operating schedule of the generators.
Unit Commitment

Unit commitment is a procedure to decide which of the available generators should start up or shut down
usually over a time period of 24 hours in such a manner that the forecasted demand is met with a spinning
reserve which would satisfy the requirements of both the security as well as the optimum saving in fuel cost.

Economic Dispatch
 Economic dispatch function determines the best allocation of generation requirements among the
committed generating units so that the total cost of supplying the energy to meet the demand within the
constraints imposed by security considerations is minimized.
Automatic Generation Control

AGC is a closed loop control system for implementing the decisions of economic dispatch on each generating
unit while achieving the following objectives.

•maintain system frequency;

•adjust generation from the base-point economic allocation in response to small-scale changes in
demand;

•control tie line power flow to meet interchange schedule in case the power system is interconnected
with the another or the system comprises two or more interconnected areas.
 NOTE

•The prime requirement for ensuring reliability, quality and affordability of the electricity supply either in a
regulated or a deregulated or a smart grid environment, is an on-line and realtime control system which deploys on
a large scale the emerging IT and communication technologies.

•However, the software and hardware cost proportion in this control system is approximately 60:40. Development
of the customized software for a power system control centre requires about 20 man-years programming effort.

•This necessitates involvement of a strong team of experts with in-depth knowledge in power system dynamics and
modeling, and a few experts to assist them in computer programming.