techtorial

Thomas J. Overbye

power system simulation

understanding small- and large-system operations

THIS ARTICLE IS THE FOURTH IN a series based on the IEEE PES Power System Basics for Business Professionals tutorial. The article provides a summary of the presentation given in the course on power system operations, building on the foundation provided by the Electricity Basics portion of the course (see the IEEE Power & Energy Magazine May/June 2003 article by Peter Sauer). The intended audience for this article is the same as the course: business professionals working in the electricity industry who do not have technical training in the area of electric power systems. Simulation software is used throughout the article to explain many of the concepts associated with power system operations. Readers can download a free, 12-bus version of the simulation software by visiting http://www.powerworld.com/FREE_ DOWNLOADS/Simulator_EVAL.asp. This download is licensed for personal educational use and includes the smaller power system cases referenced in this article.

few islands and some small isolated systems, the entire electric grid in North America is really just one big electric circuit. The humble wall outlet is actually a gateway to one of the largest and most complex objects ever built. This grid encompasses billions of individual electric loads, tens of millions of miles of wires, and thousands of generators. The focus of this article is on the operation of these large, interconnected grids. This high degree of interconnection has two primary benefits. The first is reliability: with thousands of generators interconnected through tens of thousands of transmission lines, the loss of even the largest generator or transmission line usually has but a minuscule impact on

the reliable operation of the system. When one device fails others are able to make up for the loss. The second benefit is economic, providing the key to the development of power markets. Although the system was not built explicitly for bulk power transmission (the movement of electric power from one region of the system to another) participants can buy and sell electric energy with each other, taking advantage of differentials in the cost of electric service. However, this connectivity has some detrimental side effects as well. Since an interconnected system is really just one large electric circuit, problems in one portion of the system can rapidly propagate to the remainder of

Overview
The primary purpose of an ac electric power system is to move electric power from the sources of the electric power, the generators, to the consumers of the electric power, the loads, through the wires joining the two, the transmission and distribution system. Power systems come in a variety of sizes, ranging in size from those with a single small generator and perhaps a handful of loads to the gigantic. For example, except for a
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figure 1. A three-bus power system.

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1000 900 800 700 Load (MW) 600 500 400 300 200 100 0 0 24 48 72 96 120 144 168 Hour of Week (Starting with Monday)

figure 2. Example load variation over a week.

the system, possibly resulting in a cascading blackout. To explain the operation of such interconnected systems, this tutorial starts with the simulation of a small electric power system and then gradually moves up in size until

ending with a large system.

Interconnecyed Power System Operations

To begin the exploration of interconnected power system operations, start

the simulation software, and open the B3Novar case. The computer display should be similar to Figure 1, which shows a one-line diagram (so named because the actual three conductors of the underlying three-phase electric system are represented using a single equivalent line on the display; one-lines are used extensively to represent the actual three-phase system) for a threebus power system. On the one-line the three thick lines represent nodes at which a number of electric devices are connected (i.e., buses), the circles represent generators, the large arrows represent aggregate electric loads, and the thinner black lines correspond to highvoltage transmission lines. On each device the red squares model circuit breakers, which are used to open or close a device, while the circular pie charts on each transmission line are an indication of the power flow on that line relative to the capacity of the line; when the pie is full the line is at its limit.

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Lines can be operated over their limits, but doing so in a real system could cause the line conductors to heat excessively, sag, and perhaps eventually short out, causing a dramatic explosion in the process; definitely to be avoided. Numeric fields are also used on the one-line to show the amount of power being supplied by the generators, consumed by the loads, and flowing through the transmission lines. The small green arrows superimposed to each device are used to visualize the flow of power through the system, with the size and animation speed of the arrows corresponding to the amount of real power flowing through the device. Notice the power is flowing from the generators, through the transmission system to the load. As power flows from the generators to the loads, it must, of course, obey the laws of physics. One of these laws is conservation of power, which states that the net power into any bus in the system must be zero. Hence the 200

MW of load consumed at bus 2 must be supplied from a combination of the local generation and any transmission lines incident to the bus. This power balance is easily verified in the figure, with 150 MW coming from the local generator, 17 MW coming from the line joining bus 2 with bus 1, and 33 MW coming from the line joining it with bus 3. Throughout the simulation the software will insure that this law is always satisfied. A consequence of this law is the requirement that at each instant in time the total power produced by all the generators must be equal to the total power consumed by all the loads plus any losses due to the flow of electricity through the wires. Such line losses are always present anytime power is flowing because of the resistance of the line conductors. Since electricity cannot be easily stored, one of the key challenges in power system operations is insuring there is always sufficient generation available to meet this changing electric load. With the customer is in ultimate

control of the electric switch, and hence the total electric load, the load can be quite variable. However, since people are creatures of habit, it does usually follow a somewhat predictable pattern, with a strong daily variation, as well as significant dependence on the weather conditions. Figure 2 shows the variation in a small utilitys load over the course of one week. As a disclaimer it must be mentioned that in actual power system operations the total mechanical power supplied to the generators is seldom exactly equal to the total electric power consumed by the load plus the losses. When they are not equal the system either accelerates if there is too much power in to the generators, causing the generators to spin faster and hence to increase the system electrical frequency, or decelerates if there is not enough power into the generators causing the electrical frequency to decrease. Luckily, power engineers have been quite successful in developing control schemes that usually keep the

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system frequency very constant. In large interconnected systems such as the Eastern or Western North America grids, the changes in electrical frequency are usually quite small, with the system frequency seldom deviating by more than 0.05% from the specified value (60 Hz in North America and 50 Hz in Europe). In order to discuss the main issues associated with power system operations, without undue complications, in this article the system frequency will be assumed to remain constant. In the simulation software this is done by requiring that the total generation always be equal to the total load plus losses. In the three-bus example this is accomplished by the generation at bus 1 automatically changing to match any changes in the loads, any changes in the other generators, and any changes in system losses. Hence, the generator at bus 1 can be thought of as picking up the slack between the generation supplied by the other generators and the total system load plus losses. In power engineering terminology this bus is called the slack bus. The engineering problem of determining how power flows in the transmission network is known as the power flow (sometimes called the load flow). The power flow is the tool most widely used by power engineers, and every power flow model always has a designated slack bus. The simulator uses a sequential power flow approach to simulate power system operations. To begin a time-domain simulation of the three bus system in the software package select Simulation, Play. The simulation model starts at 6:00 a.m. on a Monday, a time when the load on the electric system is rapidly increasing. The simulation itself runs at a rate equal to 30 times real-time, so a minute of simulation time will go by in two seconds. So events can happen quickly, but at any time the simulation can be paused by selecting Simulation, Pause, or restarted by selecting Simulation, Restart and then Simulation, Play. Notice that at every instant in time the power balance constraints are satisfied for each bus in the system. This is true even if a line is removed from servjanuary/february 2004

ice, which is done by clicking on one of the red circuit-breaker symbols on the line, or if the generation is varied, which is done by clicking on the up/down arrows next to the generators megawatt field. Aside from the use of the circuit breakers to open or close a transmission line, there is no way to directly control the flow on the line. Rather, the line flows are determined based upon the impedances of all the lines in the system, where the power is generated, and where the power is consumed. The flow can, however, be controlled indirectly by changing the generation dispatch. Figure 3 shows the system after several minutes of simulation, with the line from bus 1 to 2 removed and the generation varied. Notice that the losses on the line from bus 2 to bus 3 are now apparent, with 126 MW flowing into the line and 124 MW flowing out of the line; the missing 2 MWs are consumed by the resistance in the lines conductors. The total system generation is 608 MW compared to a total load of 605 MW with the 3-MW difference due to the total system losses.

Control Areas, ACE, and AGC

While an interconnected system is really just one big electric circuit, it has histori-

cally been divided into groupings known as operating areas (areas). Typically, each operating area corresponded to the portion of the grid owned by a single utility. Lines joining different operating areas are known as tie-lines. The net flow of power out of an area is then defined as its interchange. Since it costs money to generate electric power, a key aspect of power system operations is concerned with insuring that each areas net interchange is equal to its specified scheduled value. This scheduled value is simply the sum of all the power transfers for the area, with a sign convention that power exported from the area (i.e., sold) is considered positive. As long as the system frequency is equal to its specified value (the assumption here), the difference between an areas actual interchange and its scheduled interchange is known as the area control error (ACE) (the area control error also includes a term dependent on the deviation in the system frequency from the specified value; this frequency-dependent term is not discussed here). The ACE is the single most important number associated with control operations; it is continuously monitored. Anytime the ACE is negative the area is undergenerating and needs to increase its total generation. Conversely, if the ACE is

figure 3. A three-bus system with the line from bus 1 to 2 removed.

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figure 4. ACE chart.

positive, the area is overgenerating and needs to decrease its generation. The three-bus example is divided into two operating areas, Left with buses 2 and 3, and Right with just bus 1. The tie-lines are then the line from bus one to two, and the line from bus one to three. Hence, for the Figure 3 case, which has no scheduled power transactions, the ACE is 43 MW for area Left and +43 MW for area Right. To correct its ACE, Left should increase its generation by 43 MWs and Right should decrease its generation by the same amount. To view a strip-chart display of the ACE for area Left select Options/Tools, Charts, ACE Chart. Since the ACE depends on the load, and the load is constantly changing, the total area generation needs to be continually adjusted to keep the ACE close to zero. Historically, this process was

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done manually, with the control area operator or the operators in individual generating plants monitoring an ACE strip chart and then adjusting the generation accordingly. Figure 4 shows an example of how this process can be duplicated in the software. Over the last several decades, practically all control areas have switched to an automatic process known as automatic generation control (AGC). AGC automatically adjusts the generation in an area to keep the ACE close to zero, which in turn keeps the net area power interchange at its specified value. Since the ACE has a small amount of almost random ripple in its value due to the relentlessly changing system load, the usual goal of AGC is not to keep the ACE exactly at zero but rather to keep its magnitude close to zero, with an average value of zero. In the software, to place area Left on AGC control, first click on the OFF AGC fields next to the generators at buses 2 and 3 to toggle their individual AGC statuses. Then click twice on the OFF AGC field in the lower left-hand portion of the display to place the entire Left area on AGC control. Once on AGC the outputs of the generators at buses 2 and 3 will be automatically adjusted to keep the area ACE close to zero. By default, area Right is initially on AGC control. Unless an operating area has but a single generator, a crucial AGC subproblem is determining how the total generation requirements for the area should be allocated to the individual generators within the area. Optimally determining this allocation can, however, be quite complicated, requiring the solution of at least two problems with two different time horizons. First, one needs to determine which generators should be turned on and hence available for AGC control. Because of the need to have sufficient generation capacity to meet the peak electric load, for most hours of the year there is more than sufficient generation capacity. Since generators are costly to run even when not producing any power, unneeded generators should be turned off. But turning on and off generators,

particularly large coal and nuclear plants, can be quite time-consuming, often requiring many hours or even days. Hence planning is required a day

or two in advance to determine which generators should be on and which should be off. This is known as the unit commitment (UC) problem. The UC

figure 5. Marginal costs for the generators at buses 2 and 3.

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problem gets even more complex when hydro generators need to be considered with reservoir constraints. Because UC must be done well in advance of realtime it is not part of AGC. The second problem is to determine how to allocate the total area generation requirement among the online generators. Generators can have widely different short-time marginal costs; that is,

how much it costs to get one more MWh out of the generator. Nuclear and coal plants can have quite low costs, sometimes below $10/MWh for nuclear and $15/MWh for coal, while oil plants might have costs above $100/MWh. Ideally, one would like to dispatch the generation as optimally as possible, taking into account both the limits associated with the individual generators such

figure 6. Area Left selling 50 MW to area Right.

figure 7. B7Flat seven-bus, three-area case.

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as staying within their minimum and maximum power limits and the limits imposed by the transmission network, such as avoiding overloading any transmission lines. However, computational and data limitations usually dictate a more simplistic but robust approach be implemented within AGC itself. Some AGC implementations use a participation factor approach, in which a required change in area-wide generation is allocated to individual generators according to prespecified, generator-specific participation factors that dictate the percentage of the total change in the area generation that is assigned to a particular generator. Participation factor control has had the advantage of requiring relatively little computation. However, as computational costs have dropped, some AGC implementations have moved to doing an economic dispatch (ED) approach in which the generators are always dispatched to minimize the total area short-term operating costs. Combination algorithms are also used in which ED is run periodically to determine each generators setpoint dispatch. Participation factor control is then run at a faster rate to determine each generators deviation from this setpoint value due to changes in the area ACE. A necessary condition for an optimal economic dispatch solution is that the marginal costs for each generator, expressed in $/MWh, are equal unless a generator is constrained at a limit. This value is often called the area lambda. The marginal costs of generators operating at their limits will be less than the area lambda if the generator is operating at its maximum limit and greater than the area lambda it the generator is at its minimum limit. Historically, the marginal cost curve information used in the economic dispatch had been derived from the actual cost curves for the generators. However, with deregulation and the development of competitive electricity markets this is changing. Now, in some markets the generation owners are allowed to submit pricebased bids, which allows them to keep their actual costs hidden. The three-bus example allows either
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participation factor or economic dispatch AGC; simply click on the AGC field in the lower left-hand portion of the display to toggle between these two control modes or no AGC control. The generator at bus 2 has a minimum megawatt limit of 150 MW and a maximum limit of 600 MW, while the generator at bus 3 has limits of 100 MW and 700 MW (right-clicking on the generator symbol will display a dialog showing additional information about each generator). The generator participation factors for the two generators are identical, so when AGC is modeled using participation factor control, changes in area generation are allocated equally to the two units. Figure 5 shows the marginal cost curves for the two generators when dispatched economically, with the red dots indicating the current output for each unit (current unit output). Note the identical marginal costs at the economic dispatch. With the ACE/AGC approach, power transactions between different areas are easily implemented just by each area entering the algebraic sum of all their power transfers in the scheduled transaction term used in their ACE calculation. Modifying this value causes a change in the ACE, which in turn causes AGC to automatically adjust the generation in the area to the actual interchange with other areas matches the scheduled value. For example, if area A has contracts to sell 200 MW to area B, and to buy 50 MW from area C, then their net schedule transactions would be 200 50 = 150 MW. Area As AGC would then adjust its generation to be 150 MW more than what is required for its own load plus losses. Of course, for this system to work the other areas would need to adjust their scheduled transactions as welleach transaction must have a buyer and a seller. It is important to note that from an AGC perspective the details on the individual transactions are not required. AGC only needs to know the total sum of all the transactions. Figure 6 shows an example with the three-bus case in which Left is selling 50 MW to Right. In the software, once
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area Left is on AGC control the amount of scheduled transactions for Left can be modified by clicking on the arrows next to the field immediately below the Scheduled Transactions text. Note that a net of 50 MWs is being transferred from Left to Right, with 128 MW flowing out of Left on the line from bus 3 to bus 2 and 78 MW flowing into Left on the line from bus 1 to 2.

Loop Flow and Power Transfer Distribution Factors (PTDFs)

To illustrate some of the complications that can arise in systems with more than two areas, open the B7Flat case, so named because the case models a sevenbus power system but with no load variation. The system one-line is shown in Figure 7. Notice the system has three

figure 8. B7Flat case with 100 MW transaction from area Left to Right.

figure 9. PTDFs for a power transfer from area A to area I.

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areas, with the top five buses composing area Top, the bottom left bus composing area Left, and the bottom right bus composing area Right. Initially, all the areas are on AGC control with no scheduled transactions and no line violations. Note that the sum of the tie line flows for each area are close to zero. Select Simulation, Play to begin the animation. Next, to supplement the initial oneline display, select File, Open Oneline

and then select the b7area.pwd file. This opens an alternative, higher-level view of the system, showing just the three control areas rather than all the individual buses, the sum of the tie-line flows between each area, and the scheduled transactions between the areas. Enter a 100-MW transaction between area Left and Right by using the green field shown below the line joining the field as shown in Figure 8. Following

figure 10. PTDFs for a power transfer from area G to area F.

figure 11. One-line diagram of electric grid in Northern Illinois.

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the initiation of this transactions two significant changes occur in the network. First, 100 MW is being transferred from Left to Right, with the generation in Left increased by 100 MW and the generation in Right decreased by a similar amount. Second, the line from bus 2 to 5 in area Top has become overloaded as a result of this transaction. The second change illustrates an important characteristic of interconnected electricity networks: changes in one part of the network can have impacts in other parts of the network, including overloading lines in other areas. Conceptually, part of the transaction between Left and Right goes from Left to Top and then on into Right, looping through the lines in Top. The power transfers through the system according to the impedances of the lines, irrespective of ownership. Such third-party impacts are referred to as loop flow. In actual practice, how loop flow is managed depends upon the degree of system coordination and market rules. An uncoordinated approach would be to allow the transaction, forcing Top to internally redispatch its generation to correct the problem. Alternatively, a coordinated approach would be to either prevent the transaction from even taking place through a mechanism such as the available transfer capacity (ATC) calculation (see the IEEE Power & Energy Magazine May/June 2003 article by Peter Sauer) or curtail the transactions if it has already been initiated. In order to prevent or curtail transactions one needs to know the impact a particular power transfer will have on the individual lines. In North America the North American Electric Reliability Council (NERC) uses a calculation known as the power transfer distribution factor (PTDF). In short, a PTDF shows the incremental impact a power transfer, from a specified source of the power to a specified sink for the power, would have upon each power system element. For example, if for a particular power transfer a line has a PTDF value of 10%, then 10% of the power transfer would flow on that line; if the power transfer is 300 MW, the lines megawatt loading would
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change by 30 MW. Then, through a process known as transmission line loading relief (TLR), any time a line is overloaded, transactions with PTDF values greater than 5% on the overloaded element can be curtailed. To illustrate PTDFs on a slightly larger system, open the B9 case, which contains nine buses with each bus modeled as its own operating area. Figure 9 shows the one-line for this system, but rather than showing the actual power flows, it displays the PTDFs for a power transfer from bus A to bus I. Notice that 100% of the transfer leaves bus A, and 100% arrives at bus I. However, rather than following a single path, the transfer loops throughout much of the system, with all but one line having PTDFs above 5%. PTDFs for any other transfer can be calculated in the software by selecting Options/Tools, Power Transfer Distribution Factors (PTDFs) to display the PTDF dialog. Figure 10, which shows the PTDFs for a transaction between the adjacent G and F buses, illustrates that

figure 12. PTDFs for a power transfer from Wisconsin to Tennessee.

even when the buses are directly connected, a high percentage of the power may loop through other lines.

Large System Operation

Conceptually, the operation of a large interconnected grid, such as the North American Eastern Interconnect, is quite

similar to what has been presented here, albeit utilizing much larger models. For example, Figure 11 shows a one-line of the Northern Illinois portion of the Eastern Interconnect with the display containing about 1,000 buses. The operation of such a large network is more complex, but it still follows the principles intro-

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duced for the small systems: the power balance equations at each bus in the network need to be satisfied, the flow of power through the network can be visualized by the use of animated arrows and pie charts, power almost instantaneously redispatches through the system following the loss of any elements, AGC control is used to control area interchange, and PTDFs are used to track the impact

of various power transactions. Of course, the large system size does present some challenges. Current models for the Eastern Interconnect contain over 42,000 buses, 57,000 transmission lines and transformers, 6,800 generators, and 142 control areas. Understanding and interrupting the behavior of such a large system continues to challenge engineers requiring the use of advanced visualiza-

tion techniques. At any given time hundreds or even thousands of power transactions may be taking place simultaneously, often with hundreds of miles between the buyers and sellers and substantial loop flow. Figure 12 shows the PTDFs for a power transaction from Wisconsin to Tennessee, with a color contour used to shade each line based upon its PTDF value. While the figure shows data for thousands of lines, with the color contour the loop flow is readily apparent. Overall, about 600 different lines carry at least 2% of the transaction, with 5% (the NERC threshold for TLR) flowing on more than 150 lines. Hence, this transaction might be subject to curtailment if any one of these 150 lines experienced an overload.

Going Forward
While the operation of the grid is complex, the hope is that this brief techtorial has helped to explain at least some aspects of grid operations. Of course, of necessity, much has also been left unsaid, with topics such as optimal power flow (OPF), security-constrained OPF, locational marginal prices (LMPs), reactive power flow, and voltage control left for another day. If you havent already done, so please download the software and experiment with the examples for yourself. Hands-on experience with a user-friendly simulation package can be a wonderful learning tool. Also, please check the IEEE PES Web site for the next offering of the IEEE PES Power System Basics for Business Professionals course.

Biography
Thomas J. Overbye is a professor of electrical and computer engineering at the University of Illinois at UrbanaChampaign. He received his B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineering from the University of WisconsinMadison in 1983, 1988, and 1991, respectively. He was employed with Madison Gas and Electric Company from 1983 to 1991, where he worked to help develop their energy management system. His research interests include power system analysis, restructuring, p&e and visualization.

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