Real Time PMU Assisted Wide Area Oscillation Damping using Compact Reconfigurable Controllers

Abstract

The modern power grid is increasingly being used under operating conditions of increasing stress, for which it was not designed. The increasing levels of variable sources such as wind and other other renewables also present stability problems. One of these stability issues is the phenomenon of low frequency, electromechanically induced, inter-area oscillations. Research has been carried out into the area of wide area oscillation damping to study and damp these inter-area modes. This thesis implements oscillation damping by modulating the excitation system input of a FACTS device with a supplementary control signal generated from Phasor Measurement Unit data. Phasor Measurement Units are becoming increasingly common and provide remote, real-time access to power system measurement data. This thesis takes an established Phasor based oscillation damping method and combines it with modern PMU measurements to produce a hardware prototype of a real-time oscillation damping control system using remote PMU signals sent over a communications network. The developed prototype is tested with various inputs to demonstrate the flexibility and advantages of using wide area measurements in power system control.