Transforming Power Grid Operations
While computation is used to plan, monitor, and control power grids, some of the computational technologies now used are more than a hundred years old, and the complex interactions of power grid components impede real-time operations. Thus it is hard to speed up “state estimation,” the procedure used to estimate the status of the power grid from measured input. State estimation is the core of grid operations, including contingency analysis, automatic generation control, and optimal power flow. How fast state estimation and contingency analysis are conducted (currently about every 5 minutes) needs to be increased radically so the analysis of contingencies is comprehensive and is conducted in real time. Further, traditional state estimation is based on a power flow model and only provides a static snapshot—a tiny piece of the state of a large-scale dynamic machine. Bringing dynamic aspects into real-time grid operations poses an even bigger challenge. Working with the latest, most advanced computing techniques and hardware, researchers at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) intend to transform grid operations by increasing computational speed and improving accuracy. Traditional power grid computation is conducted on single PC hardware platforms. This article shows how traditional power grid computation can be reformulated to take advantage of advanced computing techniques and be converted to high-performance computing platforms (e.g., PC clusters, reconfigurable hardware, scalable multicore shared memory computers, or multithreaded architectures). The improved performance is expected to have a huge impact on how power grids are operated and managed and ultimately will lead to more reliability and better asset utilization to the power industry. New computational capabilities will be tested and demonstrated on the comprehensive grid operations platform in the Electricity Infrastructure Operations Center, which is a newly commissioned PNNL facility for research, development and demonstration of next-generation tools and technologies for enhanced energy infrastructure operations (EIOC sidebar).
- Research Organization:
- Pacific Northwest National Lab. (PNNL), Richland, WA (United States)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE
- DOE Contract Number:
- AC05-76RL01830
- OSTI ID:
- 912713
- Report Number(s):
- PNNL-SA-54302; TRN: US200801%%985
- Journal Information:
- Scientific Computing, 24(5):22-27, Vol. 24, Issue 5
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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Related Subjects
POWER DISTRIBUTION SYSTEMS
OPERATION
LOAD MANAGEMENT
CALCULATION METHODS
ACCURACY
FLOW MODELS
PERFORMANCE
RELIABILITY
COMPUTERIZED CONTROL SYSTEMS
high performance computing
power grid
electricity grid
energy
Electricity Infrastructure Operations Center
EIOC
SCADA