Electricity, Volume 1, Issue 1 (December 2020) – 5 articles

The last decade has seen an immense growth in renewable energy sources such as solar photovoltaic (PV) plants due to environmental concerns. Due to this rapid growth, solar PV plants are starting to have a larger influence on power system stability and thus their dynamic behavior cannot be ignored in stability studies. The lack of well-established models and parameter sets is the primary reason solar PV plants are not modeled with dynamic characteristics. This paper presents a method to define a standard parameter set for representing large-scale and aggregated solar PV plants in stability studies from the perspective of the transmission system operator (TSO). The method takes into account primarily the conditions provided in the grid connection requirements; for illustrative purposes, the connection requirements of the Netherlands are used. Additionally, a relationship defined as short-circuit current (SCC) PV ratio is proposed to estimate the effect of solar PV plants on transient stability. To illustrate the workings of the proposed ratio, the transmission network of the TenneT TSO B.V. in the Netherlands is used. The analysis demonstrated that high values of SCC PV ratio are an indicator that solar PV plants affect the transient stability while low values of SCC PV ratio showed that solar PV plants have minimal effect on the transient stability. Additionally, methods to improve the transient stability are provided which include limiting the operation regions of critical generators, increasing short-circuit ratio by adding a synchronous condenser or static compensator (STATCOM) and decreasing the reactance between the critical synchronous generator and faulted bus. Full article

This paper presents techniques for the application of tertiary and secondary voltage control through the use of intelligent proportional integral derivative (PID) controllers and the wide area measurement system (WAMS) in the IEEE 39 bus system (New England system). The paper includes power system partitioning, pilot bus selection, phasor measurement unit (PMU) placement, and optimal secondary voltage control parameter calculations to enable the application of the proposed voltage control. The power system simulation and analyses were performed using the DIgSILENT and MATLAB software applications. The optimal PMU placement was performed in order to apply secondary voltage control. The tertiary voltage control was performed through an optimal power flow optimization process in order to minimize the active power losses. Two different methods were used to design the PID secondary voltage control, namely, genetic algorithm (GA) and neural network based on genetic algorithm (NNGA). A comparison of system performances using these two methods under different operating conditions is presented. The results show that NNGA secondary PID controllers are more robust than GA ones. The paper also presents a comparison between system performance with and without secondary voltage control, in terms of voltage deviation index and total active power losses. The graph theory is used in system partitioning, and sensitivity analysis is used in pilot bus selection, the results of which proved their effectiveness. Full article

Photovoltaic (PV) systems are the most promising technology for residential installation as an alternative source of energy. To interface the primary source of PV to the electrical grid, an LCL-filtered inverter is being broadly adopted due to its low volume compared to the L-filtered one and the superior ability to filter high-frequency harmonics. In this context, this paper proposes highly accurate digital current controllers for single-phase LCL-filtered grid-connected inverters. The proposed controllers are: Integral-single-lead, integral double-lead, integral double-lead taking into account the effect of pulse width modulation (PWM) delay and the proportional-resonant (PR). These controllers are different from the traditional Proportional-Integral (PI), Proportional-Derivative (PD), and Proportional-Integral-Derivative (PID). One of the novelties of this paper is the detailed, step-by-step procedure for tuning each parameter of the proposed digital controllers considering the dynamic behavior of the LCL filter. The proposed PR has a different and more straightforward tuning methodology than those procedures commonly found in the literature. Therefore, this paper is an attractive tool for a fast, accurate, and reliable way to tune digital current controllers for a single-phase LCL-filtered grid-connected inverter. The controllers were verified in the digital signal controller (DSC) TMS320F28335 while the power structure runs in a hardware-in-loop (HIL device). Results show the efficacy of the proposed controllers. Full article

A lot of companies in the power sector use Engineering, Procurement, and Construction (EPC) contracts for complex infrastructure projects such as power plants. This paper presents a series two-stage data envelopment analysis (DEA) approach for the ex ante benchmarking of EPC power plant projects. The current study aims to improve over single-stage DEA and evaluate the efficiency of a group of twelve domestic (located in Greece) and international natural gas-fired power plant projects of different technologies (combined cycle power plant (CCPP) projects with single and multi-shaft configuration, and open cycle power plant (OCPP) projects) by employing a series two-stage DEA model. In the first stage, performance of the EPC mode is evaluated, whereas in the second stage the plant annual operational efficiency is assessed. In the light of the results, there is a lower level of performance in the EPC mode than in operating efficiency. The OCPP projects have the best operating efficiency, whereas they are ranked in-between the CCPP projects with single and multi-shaft configuration in EPC mode performance. Full article