Nov 01, 2020
New DFG-project: Stability assessment for decentralized energy resources in power distribution networks
The aim of the project is to develop application-oriented guidelines for the evaluation of the robust stability of control systems for DGs in electrical power supply networks. It is a cooperation between the Institute of Control Theory and the Institute of Electrical Power Systems and High Voltage Engineering at TU Dresden. Projekt runtime is 3 years.
The transition of the electrical energy system requires adaptable operational management concepts with regard to the large number of decentralized generators (DGs) in order to ensure the maintenance voltage. However, passive methods such as Q(U)-control continue to serve at least as a fallback level since they are very easy to use and can locally influence the system voltage by adaptively providing reactive power. DGs are subject to technical fluctuations due to the source of primary energy and are increasingly exposed to economic fluctuation. They are more and more being used in direct marketing so that the increased adherence to schedules at the crossover between the 15-minute marketing intervals can lead to high gradients in available power. Accordingly, the plant control should be able to safely handle voltage jumps (due to time-synchronous DG behavior) in order to exclude undesirable overshooting or even unstable behavior. However, the problem in this setup is that each plant controller works for itself, i.e., therefore only monitoring and processing the controlled quantity at its own measurement point in the grid. The plant controllers do not consider the overall impact of all control activities. This decentralized control strategy leads to highly interesting and challenging control theoretic problems.
On the one hand, it is important to have the exact definition in terms of control-theory and, thus, ensure stability - even in the event of subsystem failures - on the other hand, practical applicability of the criteria in the form of guidelines and easy-to-use formulas is desired.
In addition, questions on robustness against parameter uncertainties and grid-typical disturbances as well as the detection and identification of incorrect plant controls will be addressed. To this end, methods are going to be developed that allow i. a. the grid operator to carry out an evaluation of the current system stability margin considering the full available parameter space within a limited grid area and with minimal effort.
Furthermore, methods for the detection and isolation of faulty plant controls or modified controller structures are to be developed and tested. With these multi-layered approaches, the problem will be approached in a sophisticated way from the theoretic side (by using residual generators and/or pattern recognition) as well as from the practitioners perspective (with a fallback solution working on a sensor basis). The findings can serve as a basis for future research projects in the field of automated grid operation management.
The algorithms and concepts developed during the project will be tested on a powerful network model, which is physically available at the applicants of this proposal.