NEED OF COMPUTER CONTROL OF POWER SYSTEMS
The computer control of power systems are needed in
❖ Power system Planning
❖ System Monitoring
❖ Automatic generation control
❖ Security control
❖ Voltage or reactive power control
❖ Unit commitment
❖ Economic dispatch
❖ State estimation
❖ Contingency analysis
❖ Load forecasting Increase in unit size, growth of interconnected and the need to
maintain the system in normal mode requires sophisticated control, instrumentation
and protection.
❖ The multiplicity of monitoring instruments in the control room and their distance
apart make the observation of more than a few vitalises almost impossible, especially
during the intense activity of plant start-up.
❖ The operation of changing plot parameters and take critical decisions.
❖ These requirements led to the development and application of more advanced solid
❖ state modular electronic instruments, computer based direct control and date
processing systems. Computer Configuration Trend
❖ The computer system used at power system has been undergoing continuous
development over the years. Formerly, all the functions such as data acquisition,
logging display, and control and performance calculations were performer by
computer processing unit (CPU).
❖ In such system failure of any of the elegant leads to the total system breakdown.
Thus, the need for a dual computer configuration arose which is quite costly.
❖ The further advancement in communication technology and powerful
microprocessors has resulted in the cheap and reliable microprocessor based
Distributed Processing System (DPS).
❖ It is based on the principle of LAN. Today, in all process industries including
power plant, this system is employed for data acquisition and control.
❖ DPS consists of a number of microprocessors connected through data highway,
which is passive in nature. Each processor is assigned a specific task independently.
ENERGY CONTROL CENTRES
When the power system increases in size-the number of substations,
transformers, switchgear and so on-their operation and interaction become more
complex. So it becomes essential to monitor this information simultaneously for the
total system which is called as energy control centre.
A fundamental design feature of energy centre is that, it increases system
reliability and economic feasibility. In other words, Energy Management (EM) is
performed at control centre called system control centre.
Fig. shows the schematic diagram showing the information flow between
various functions to be performed in an operations control centre computer system.
The system gets information about the power system from remote terminal units
(RTU) that encode measurement transducer outputs and operand/closed status
information into digital signals that are transmitted to the operations centre over
communication circuits.
The control centre can transmit control information such as raise/lower
commands to the speed changer and in turn to the generators and open/close
commands to circuit breakers (CBs). The information coming into the control centre
is breaker/switch status indications and analog measurements.
The analog measurements of generator outputs must be used directly by the
Automatic Generation Control (AGC) program, whereas, all other data will be
processed by the state estimator before being used by the other programs. Real time
operations are in two aspects.
Three level control
• Turbine-governor to adjust generation to balance changing load-instantaneous
control.
• ACG (called Load Frequency Control (LFC)) maintains frequency and net power
interchange –action repeated at 2-6 sec. interval.
• Economic Dispatch Control (EDC) distributes the load among the units such that
fuel cost is minimum-executed at 5-10 minutes intervals.
Primary voltage control
• Excitation controls regulate generator bus voltage.
• Transmission voltage control device includes SVC (Static VAR Controllers),shunt
capacitors, transformer taps, etc
Automatic Generation Control
Automatic generation control (AGC) consists of two major and several minor
functions that operate online in real time to adjust the generation against load at
minimum cost. The major functions are load frequency control and economic
dispatch, each of which is described below. The minor functions are reserve
monitoring, which assures enough reserve on the system; interchange scheduling,
which initiates and completes scheduled interchanges; and other similar monitoring
and recording functions
Fig. Energy control centres
ECC Functions
The practice of all communication links between equipment and the control
centre could be interrupted and still, electric service is being maintained. The
generating in the system remains synchronized to the transmission network and
maintains its existing power output level even without signals received from control
centre.
Monitoring
An energy control centre fulfills the function of coordinating their response of
the system elements in both normal operation and emergency conditions. The burden
of repetitious control in normal situations is delegated to the digital computer and
selective monitoring is performed by human operators. The digital computer is used
to process the incoming stream of data to detect abnormalities and the human operator
via lights, buzzers and CRT presentations. Many lower level or less serious cases of
exceeding normal limits are routinely handled by digital computer. A more serious
abnormality detected by the digital computer may cause suspension of normal control
functions In emergencies such as loss of a major generator or excess power demands
by a neighboring utility on the tie lines, many alarms could be detected and the system
could enter an emergency state.
Data Acquisition and Control
Data acquisition provides operators and computer control systems with status
and measurement information needed to supervise overall operations. Security control
analyses the consequences of faults to establish operating conditions. A SCADA
system consists of a master station and remote terminal unit (RTU). Master station
communicates information to the RTU for observing and controlling plants. RTUs are
installed at generating station or transmission substation or distribution substation.
RTUs transmitting status of the device and measurements to master station and
receive control commands from the master station. In a computer aided data
acquisition scheme, the steady state reading can be acquired simultaneously from
various instrument locations and can be saved for future analysis. The transient may
result in the form of voltage or current fluctuations. In a real power system, the
transient may result in the failure of components and it is sometimes difficult to trace
the origin of disturbance. Using a Data Acquisition system, the transients can be
reduced and analyzed.
Phasor Measurement Units for Power Systems (PMU):
A phasor measurement unit (PMU) is a device used to estimate the magnitude
and phase angle of an electrical phasor quantity (such as voltage or current) in the
electricity grid using a common time source for synchronization. Time
synchronization is usually provided by GPS or IEEE 1588 Precision Time Protocol,
which allows synchronized real-time measurements of multiple remote points on the
grid. PMUs are capable of capturing samples from a waveform in quick succession
and reconstructing the phasor quantity, made up of an angle measurement and a
magnitude measurement. The resulting measurement is known as a synchro phasor.
These time synchronized measurements are important because if the grid’s supply and
demand are not perfectly matched, frequency imbalances can cause stress on the grid,
which is a potential cause for power outages.
PMUs can also be used to measure the frequency in the power grid. A typical
commercial PMU can report measurements with very high temporal resolution, up to
120 measurements per second. This helps engineers in analysing dynamic events in
the grid which is not possible with traditional SCADA measurements that generate
one measurement every 2 or 4 seconds. Therefore, PMUs equip utilities with
enhanced monitoring and control capabilities and are considered to be one of the most
important measuring devices in the future of power systems. A PMU can be a
dedicated device, or the PMU function can be incorporated into a protective relay or
other device.
Existing systems in power grid such as Energy Management System (EMS)
and Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition system (SCADA) have the capability
to provide only steady state view of power system with high data flow latency. In
Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition system (SCADA) it was not possible to
measure the phase angles of bus voltages of power system network in real time, dueto
technical difficulties in synchronising measurements from distant locations.
Measurements were obtained at slower rates; it was not possible to get
dynamic behaviour of power system as well as limited situational awareness was
conveyed to the operator. Advent of Phasor Measurement Units (PMUs) alleviated
this problem by synchronising voltage and current waveforms at widely dispersed
locations with respect to global positioning system. PMU is superior to SCADA with
respect to speed, performance and reliability.
As per definition of IEEE, PMU is defined as device that produces
synchronised phasor, frequency and rate of change of frequency estimates from
voltage and/or current signals and time synchronising signal. PMUs provide real time
synchronised measurements in power system with better than one microsecond
synchronisation accuracy, which is obtained by Global Positioning System (GPS)
signals. PMUs are situated in power system substations, and provide measurement of
time stamped positive sequence voltages and currents of all monitored buses and
feeders. Data from various substations are collected at suitable site, and by aligning
time stamps of measurements a coherent picture of the state power system is created.
PMUs are time synchronised, high speed measurement units that monitor current and
voltage waveforms (sinusoids) in the grid, convert them into a phasor representation
through high end computation and securely transmit the same to centralised server.
PMU technology is well suited to track grid dynamics in real time, the data
obtained can be used for wide area monitoring, stability monitoring, dynamic system
ratings and improvement in state estimation, protection and control. It enables utilities
to proactively plan energy delivery and prevent failures.
PMU application
❖ Post disturbance analysis
❖ Stability monitoring
❖ Thermal overload monitoring
❖ Power system restoration
❖ State estimation
❖ Real time control
❖ Adaptive protection
System Hardware Configuration
The supervisory control and the data acquisition system allow a few operators
to monitor the generation and HV transmission system. Consistent with principles of
high reliability and fail safe failures, electric utilities have almost universally applieda
redundant set of dual digital computers for the function of remote date acquisition
control, energy management and system security.
Both computers have their own core memory and drive an extensive number
of input-output devices such as printers, teletypes, and magnetic tape drive, disks.
Usually one computer, the on-line units, is monitoring and controlling the power
system. The backup computer may be executing off-line batch programs such as load
forecasting or hydro-thermal allocation
The on-line computer periodically updates a disk memory shared between the
two computers. Upon a fail over or switch-in status command, the stored information
of the common disk is inserted in the memory of the on-line computer.
The information used by the on-line computer has a maximum age of update
cycle. All of the peripheral equipment is interfaced with the computer through input-
output microprocessors that have been programmed to communicate, as well as pre-
process the analog information, check for limits, convert to another system of units
and so on.
The microprocessors can transfer data in and out of computer memory without
interrupting the central processing unit. As a result of these precautions, for all critical
hardware functions, there is often a guaranteed 99.8% or more availability.
Software also allows for multilevel hardware failures and initialization of
application programs, if failures occur. Critical operation and functions are
maintained during either preventive or corrective maintenance.
Besides hardware, new digital code to control the system may be compiled
and tested in the backup computer, then switched to on-line status. The digital
computers are usually employed in a fixed cycle operating mode, with priority
interrupts wherein computer periodically performs a list of operations. The most
critical functions have the fastest scan cycle.
Typically, the following categories are scanned every 2 seconds.
o All status points such as switchgear position, substation loads and voltages,
transformer tap positions and capacitor banks.
o Tie-line flow and interchanges schedules.
o Generator loads, voltage, operating limits and boiler capacity.
o Telemetry verification to detect failures and error in the remote bilateral
communication links between the digital computer and remote equipment. The
turbine-generators are often commanded to new power levels every 4 seconds, sharing
the load adjustment based on each unit‘s response capability in MW/min. The
absolute power output of each unit‘s response capability is typically adjusted every 5
min by the computer executing an economic dispatch program to determine the base
power settings.
