North American Bulk Power System Research Articles

Data-Driven Engineering: The Reliability and Resilience of the North American Bulk Power System [Technology Leaders

Electricity is an essential need for modern society. Nearly everything we do relies on safe and affordable electric energy. The constant demand for reliable energy delivery exists during a time of rapid changes to and evolutions of the bulk power system (BPS) in North America. Inverter-based resources, such as wind, solar photovoltaic (PV), battery energy storage systems, and hybrid plants, continue to transform the mix of BPS-connected generating resources. Sustainability and climate change initiatives are driving innovations in end-use loads, such as the electrification of the transportation sector. Distributed energy resources (DERs), aggregators, and the Internet of Things are pushing consumers of electric energy toward becoming prosumers in our electrical ecosystem. The persistent threat of cyberattacks on the electrical infrastructure by cybercriminals and nation-states is bringing attention to securing the BPS. These challenges are significant, yet the common themes toward how to overcome them may be more straightforward: Collaboration is key, information sharing is critical, technology innovation is inevitable, and engineering decisions require adequate data to develop appropriate solutions.

A Risk-Based Approach to Assess the Operational Resilience of Transmission Grids

Modern risk analysis studies of the power system increasingly rely on big datasets, either synthesized, simulated, or real utility data. Particularly in the transmission system, outage events have a strong influence on the reliability, resilience, and security of the overall energy delivery infrastructure. In this paper we analyze historical outage data for transmission system components and discuss the implications of nearby overlapping outages with respect to resilience of the power system. We carry out a risk-based assessment using North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC) Transmission Availability Data System (TADS) for the North American bulk power system (BPS). We found that the quantification of nearby unscheduled outage clusters would improve the response times for operators to readjust the system and provide better resilience still under the standard definition of N-1 security. Finally, we propose future steps to investigate the relationship between clusters of outages and their electrical proximity, in order to improve operator actions in the operation horizon.

Addressing Impacts of Geomagnetic Disturbances on the North American Bulk Power System

Addressing Impacts of Geomagnetic Disturbances on the North American Bulk Power System