Inter-Area Oscillations of Power Systems

Integration of renewable energy sources in the existing electrical power system and increased interconnection of power systems can in many cases result in long distant power transfers between the parts of the grid.

Such power transfer carries the potential risk of low frequency electromechanical oscillations in the power grid. This kind of oscillatory behaviour is characteristic of the systems with a number of synchronous generators connected in the grid. Those, so called, inter-area oscillations occur frequently in power networks and are usually stable.

Oscillations can however have low damping ratios and can severely limit transfer capacities of the network. In some cases, damping ratios can even be negative and oscillations can grow out of control leading to grid reliability issues and potentially large-scale blackouts. A number of those events have been recorded in the past.

For this coursework, you should investigate the phenomenon of inter-area oscillations and produce a report on your findings in the form of short review type research paper.

Submit your report as a single PDF type file and attach any developed Matlab code or data to it. Your paper should be written in the IEEE format with the maximum length of 6 pages and not more than approximately 2000 words. You can make use of IEEE paper template and instructions provided in the IEEE template.

In the report, you should briefly introduce the problem, list and describe relevant and up to date research publications on the subject and, if possible, at the same time critically evaluate those works and identify potential gaps in the research literature.

Further, your report should describe suitable techniques (methods or algorithms) for dealing with the problem of inter-area oscillation. Here, you can consider either measurement, detection, analysis and/or techniques for preventing or reducing their occurrence.

Optionally, (for higher mark) you can include the section where a particular case of inter-area oscillations in the power system will be studied in more details. This could contain available oscillation data measured in some particular grid or, preferably, your own simulation (using Matlab or some other suitable package) of a system and oscillations in the system. Results of your simulations should be presented and described.

Discussion and conclusions of achieved results should be given at the end of your report/paper followed by the list of references and appendices if used. The report, as well as referencing should be written in the format and style specified by IEEE.

You can work individually or in groups of maximum two (2) students. If you do work in a group, your submission should include a short statement outlining the contribution of each author to the work presented in the paper.

This statement should be included in the "Acknowledgement" section towards the end of the paper before the list of references.