A Case Study on Black Start Capability Assessment

Abstract

Despite the fact that tremendous efforts have been placed to avoid outages on power system networks, forced outages can occur as a result of catastrophic event, device error, operator fault and cyber threats. These outages, when occur, can lead to partial or complete blackout. The effects of the blackout are national safety, financial losses, system reliability reduction, and threaten personnel. To minimise such impacts of the blackouts, it is essential to utilise the available black-start units to restore power system to normal condition with minimum restoration time. In this paper a black start modelling and simulation study is accomplished, using real data from Benghazi North Power Plant (BNPP), to validate the feasibility of a black start plan in terms of both steady state and transient operating conditions. It is found that selection of the optimum size of the black start depends on the capacity of the largest motor during starting, the capacitive charging reactance of the connected cable or transmission line as well as the size and vector group of the transformers.