Toward a Highly Available Modern Grid

The concept of fault-coverage and how it affects the availability of a dynamic grid is explained through a two-area power system represented by an aggregated swing model. Fault-coverage is intended to serve as a criterion for decisions in redundancy management to benefit system availability upon occurrence of a disturbance due to loss of equipment. The criterion allows the incorporation of formal measures of uncertainties associated with real-time fault diagnosis, as well as formal control performance measures. Also investigated is the effect of the availability of a modern grid’s supporting structure on the availability of the grid, with focus on a network of measurement units. The focus stems from the recognition of a greater need for real-time diagnosis and control in a modern power grid. A redundancy architecture design problem is formulated based on a Markov model of a measurement network, and a solution is presented that minimizes the number of phasor measurement unit (PMU) restorations and the usage of communication links to a PMU while maintaining a prescribed data availability at any PMU. A 3-bus/3-PMU network is used as an example to explain the formulation and the solution of the redundancy architecture design problem.