Power system operation and Control

(Basics, SCADA, EMS)

Prof. S. Shahnawaz Ahmed

For subsequent materials assistance taken mainly from :

1.Antonio Gomez-Expostio, Antonio J. Conejo and Claudio Canizares, “Electric

Energy Systems Analysis and Operation”, CRC Presss, New York, 2018.

2. W.A.Elmore, “Pilot Protective Relaying”, ABB-Marcel Dekker Inc., 2000.

3. Janaka Ekanayake, Kithsiri Liyanage, Jianzhong Wu, Akihiko Yokoyama and Nick
Jenkins, Smart Grid: Technology and Applications, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., UK,
First Edition, 2012.

4. The Electric Power Engineering Handbook, edited by Leonard L. Grigsby, CRC

Press, NY, 3rd Edition, 2012.

5. Jan Machowski, Zbigniew Lubosny, Janusz W. Bialek and James R. Bumby:

Power System Dynamics Stability and Control, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd, UK, 2020.

6. S. Shahnawaz Ahmed: Power System Operation and Control, a handout, May

2022.

7. Contemporary URLs
 Background
•Availability of commercially viable and ‘quality’ electrical energy in a bulk
quantum is the basic need for the survival and evolution of the modern civilization.
This is because electrical energy is the most convenient one for generation,
transmission, distribution, consumption, storage and control.

•The phrase ‘quality’ refers to a target that electricity be delivered to the end users
without exceeding the allowed limits in voltage deviation, frequency drift, wave
shape distortion (i.e. deviation from pure sine wave) and outage. Typical values of
these limits are respectively set at 5%, 1%, 5% and only 32 seconds/year (i.e.
99.9999% availability) in the context of today’s world.

•Power System: This is a system where a plethora of generation (G), transmission

(T), distribution (D) and utilization (i.e. consumption and storage) apparatus, and
measurement, control, protection and monitoring devices are so interconnected
that it becomes possible to bring power from distant and dispersed generation
units with fuel diversity (fossil fuel, nuclear, hydro, renewable) and deliver it in a
bulk quantum with quality and economy to the consumers who use appliances of
diverse nature ranging from low tech to high tech.

•The planning, design and operation of a power system requires a knowledge of its
main control functions .
•Since the inception in the late nineteenth century (around the year 1880)
power systems have been traditionally built in a vertically integrated form
comprising generation, transmission and distribution facilities owned and
operated by the same entity.

•Since the late twentieth century (around 1996) a concept termed

‘restructuring’/’deregulation’/’unbundling’ evolved across the world starting
from California of USA. This concept was the brainchild of primarily the
economists. This resulted in separate owners and operators for the three
sectors to pave the way for competition in the generation sector (i.e. many
generation entities) and creation of ‘electricity market’ from where the
distribution agencies will buy electricity at volatile spot price and/or under long
term bilateral contracts.

•Needless to say , the operation and control objectives and schemes for a
restructured power system differs to some extent from those for a vertically
integrated one because of the differences in the interests of the owners of the
three primary sectors (G, T, D).
 Smart grid concept
•Since the early twenty first century (around 2007), a new vision termed ‘smart
grid’ was floated mainly by the public bodies and regulators of electricity utilities
in the North America against the backdrop of several incidents of massive
blackouts that occurred in USA and Europe in the years 2003 and 2004.

•The smart grid reality is still in the stage of evolution; however, it stems from an
idea that the large power grids interconnecting bulk and centralized power plants
across the world are ‘aging’ and hence a potential solution could be to make the
system self-healing in the event of blackouts through embedding (i) distributed
small-scale generation resources including renewable sources, (ii) plug-in hybrid
electric vehicles (that use high power density rechargeable alkaline batteries)
and (iii) smart appliances (self- responsive to system condition) at the consumer
end all of which can be communicated by the grid or distribution system control
centre via a building EMS or a smart meter utilizing the available distributed
communication media such as cell phone network, internet, broadband wireless
systems such as WiMAX, fiber optic networks, and power line carriers (PLC).

•In brief DERs (Distributed Energy Resources including storage devices), two way
communication and DR (Demand Response) are the conspicuous features of a
smart grid.
http://sensorweb.cs.gsu.edu/?q=EnergyWeb
(Real-time price signal)
Vision for a smart grid city

Integrated gasification combined cycle

Carbon Capture and Storage
 Why power system control is so important?

The answer is very simple.

•People are more demanding regarding electricity compared to other

services.

•It is the people’s expectation that whenever they switch on an

electrical device it should get supply.

•They are not ready to hear “electricity network is busy”

unlike the patience they show to entertain a message: Telephone/
cell phone network is now busy.
 EMS

Source: 1.Power Eng. Handbook, CRC Press, NY,

Source 2:Jan Machowski, Janusz W. Bialek and James R. Bumby:
POWER SYSTEM DYNAMICS Stability and Control, John Wiley & Source:3. Antonio Gomez-Expostio, Antonio J. Conejo and Claudio Canizares,
Sons, Ltd, UK,. “Electric Energy Systems Analysis and Operation”, CRC Presss, New York,

RTU cubicles
in regional or national control centre server
Optimal power flow: dispatches
generators to minimize generation cost
taking into account line loss, voltage and
line flow limits
in substations, power stations
State estimation: cleans up acquired data
from random noise and gross errors
AGC: secondary control of frequency
from area (regional) control centre taking
into account load change, tie line flows and
generation dispatches
Source:1
Most of the applications are executed in real time i.e.
require repetition at few seconds to few minutes,
using on-line data.
Basics of typical Power system control:

•First load is forecasted for next 24 hours

•then it is decided which generation units

be committed in each interval or an hour

• and how much power should

economically be dispatched from each of
the committed units.

•The decision goes to what is known as

Automatic Generation Control (AGC) that
maintains the frequency at the desired
value.

•If needed a security analysis is done in

advance to avert the adverse impacts of Forecasting the demand: a sample case
probable severe contingencies. This
requires altering the current operating
condition of a system based on the
decisions obtained by running another tool
“Optimal Power Flow” giving priority to
security rather than to economy.
Generator’s Control for frequency and Voltage

Source 2
Source: 3
•In a power system with increase in demand the frequency and voltage
both decreases and vice versa.

The frequency can be restored partially by the primary (local)

action of generator-turbine governor (i.e. local control by each unit
or plant)

while complete return to the normal value is possible by the

secondary control (e.g. AGC) exercised by the Area Control Centre.
If necessary other secondary actions such as real power balancing,
load shedding are also exercised by the area or regional control
centres.

In a large interconnected system tertiary control (if needed) is

exercised by the National Load Dispatch Center that resets the
reference values of power for individual generating units to the
values calculated by optimal dispatch in such a way that the overall
demand is satisfied together with the schedule of power
interchanges.
The voltage can be restored by the primary or local
control from AVR of each generation unit and if
necessary by transformer tap changing, capacitor
switching at substations. However, secondary control
is not always necessary but if needed secondary
control such as coordinated reactive power
dispatching, load shedding etc. is exercised from area
control centres.
 Basic structure of SCADA

Various communication links used in SCADA

Source: Electric Power Distribution
System Engineering by Turan Gӧnen
Combination of radial (star) and
multi-point (party line) master-RTU
network

Hierarchical control of power system

A typical layout of SCADA control centre
 •PMU can calculate both magnitude

many transducers needed to capture signals by RTU

and phase angles i.e. phasors.
•It needs synchronization with GPS.

RTU IED PMU

DFT for both

RTU and IED:

RTUs are 1st generation while IEDs are

the 2nd generation of data acquisition The time error of 1 μs corresponds to the
devices. PMU is the latest development.
All of these can not only acquire data but
angle error of 360◦/20 · 103 = 0.018◦, that is
also control local equipment such as 0.005%. Such an error is small enough from the
breaker, capacitor bank, transformer tap point of view of phasor measurement.
changer etc. under remote command.
WAMPAC: Wide Area Monitoring, Protection and Control system is another advanced
variant of EMS that uses only PMUs .
WAMPAC can help visualize synchronous generators ‘ relative oscillations and hence
enable controlled separation of a large system in case instability is likely to occur.
SCADA vs. SAS

SCADA reflects a central monitoring concept with

client-server configuration in which RTUs /IEDs
/PMUs at many substations and power stations are
clients and these are hooked up with a server
(termed EMS) at a central location.

•SAS (Substation Automation System) provides Substation Control &

protection, control, automation, monitoring, and Monitoring System (SCMS) or
communication capabilities as a part of a SAS Applications
comprehensive substation control and monitoring Automatic voltage control
solution. This reflects a data acquisition, monitoring Synchronism
and control system confined only within a specific Tap position monitoring
substation. It operates independently of EMS and Load & bus transfer
may be connected to send data to EMS also. Load curtailment
At the same substation SAS and RTUs of SCADA may Capacitor control algorithm
exist independently. Substation maintenance
mode
Fault detection
Sequence of event recorder
SAS (may be part of an intelligent substation)
Data base

Data base incorporates comprehensive information about

the system. The information can broadly be classified into
three groups such as:
i) on- line data from the RTUs;
ii) fixed data entered through man-machine interface;
iii)output of state estimator and other application programs.

The emerging trend is to connect the EMS database with a

the GIS (Geographical Information System) server. GIS maps
and locates all the resources at supply and demand end with
geographical coordinates. This can also display the real time
status and operational quantities of the feeders and
consumers’ service lines.
State Estimator

• The raw telemetered data received from the RTUs is mainly corrupted by two
types of errors- random measurement noise and gross error i.e. bad data.

•The first type of error mainly results from current and potential transformer errors,
transducer (meter) inaccuracies, analog to digital conversion, noise in
communication channels or interference noise.

•Gross error mainly results from faults or failures in metering and communication
system.

•State estimator cleans up the raw data using a redundant set of on-line
measurements through a statistical criterion.
Security : monitor, analyze contingencies and
take SCOPF based actions

Typical classification of power

system security related states
Load Forecasting
• Load forecasting is the prediction of future
electricity demand by using some statistical
techniques or machine learning tools (such as
regression or ANN) to adjust past demands to present
weather conditions and other anticipated events.

•For control purpose a short term forecasting is done

usually once a day or every hour or few hours
(depending upon system dynamics e.g. change in
demanded MW/minute) to develop an operating
schedule of the generators.
Unit Commitment

Unit commitment is a procedure to decide which of the

available generators should start up or shut down usually
over a time period of 24 hours in such a manner that the
forecasted demand is met with a spinning reserve which
would satisfy the requirements of both the security as well as
the optimum saving in fuel cost.

Economic Dispatch

Economic dispatch function determines the best allocation

of generation requirements among the committed generating
units so that the total cost of supplying the energy to meet
the demand within the constraints imposed by security
considerations is minimized.
Automatic Generation Control

AGC is a closed loop control system for implementing the

decisions of economic dispatch on each generating unit while
achieving the following objectives.

•maintain system frequency;

•adjust generation from the base-point economic

allocation in response to small-scale changes in demand;

•control tie line power flow to meet interchange

schedule in case the power system is interconnected
with the another or the system comprises two or more
interconnected areas.
Underlying logic of an AGC scheme

Use of SCADA in generation control

 NOTE

•The prime requirement for ensuring reliability, quality and

affordability of the electricity supply either in a regulated or a
deregulated or a smart grid environment, is an on-line and real-
time control system which deploys on a large scale the emerging
IT and communication technologies.

•However, the software and hardware cost proportion in this

control system is approximately 60:40. Development of the
customized software for a power system control centre requires
about 20 man-years programming effort.

•This necessitates involvement of a strong team of experts with

in-depth knowledge in power system dynamics and modeling,
and a few experts to assist them in computer programming.