Accurate frequency estimation is critical for the control, monitoring and protection of electrical power systems. This paper introduces the novel concept ofQuasi Steady-State (QSS) frequencyas a quantity that fills the gap between stationary and instantaneous frequency. QSS frequency coincides with the fundamental frequency of an AC voltage in any stationary conditions, including unbalanced and non-sinusoidal, and is able to capture the time-varying fundamental frequency in transient conditions. The paper also proposes a metric borrowed from fluid dynamics, namely, the time derivative of the circulation, to define the scope of validity of the QSS frequency. Analytical examples as well as a case study based on a fully-fledged EMT model of the IEEE 39-bus system serve to illustrate, respectively, the properties of the QSS frequency and its behavior in transient conditions.

The paper shows the equivalence between the geometric frequency of an electric quantity, namely, voltage and current, and the Lagrange derivative of a stream-line of a fluid. The geometric frequency is a concept recently proposed by the author and is a generalization of the instantaneous frequency, a quantity that is particularly important for the analysis and the control of electric power systems. On the other hand, the Lagrange derivative is mostly utilized in fluid dynamics and helps decomposing the time derivative into various components. The paper shows how these components relate to the elements of the geometric frequency. The paper also shows, through a variety of numerical examples, how the decomposition of the Lagrange derivative helps identifying the distortion of the waveform of a measured electric quantity and how this information can be utilized to classify system operating conditions.

The paper revisits the concepts of instantaneous active and reactive powers and provides a novel definition for basic circuit elements based on quantities utilized in classical mechanics, such as absolute and relative velocity, momentum density, angular momentum and apparent forces. The discussion leverages from recent publications by the authors that interpret the voltage and current as velocities in generalized Lagrangian coordinates. The main result of the paper is a general and compact expression for the instantaneous active and reactive power of inductances, capacitances and resistances as a multivector proportional to the generalized kinetic energy and the geometric frequency multivector. Several numerical examples considering stationary and transient sinusoidal and non-sinusoidal conditions are discussed in the case study.

The paper proposes a generalization of the Park transform based on the Frenet frame, which is a special set of coordinates defined in differential geometry for space curves. The proposed geometric transform is first discussed for three dimensions, which correspond to the common three-phase circuits. Then, the expression of the time derivative of the proposed transform is discussed and the Frenet-Serret formulas and the Darboux vector are introduced. The change of reference frame and its differentiation based on Cartan’s moving frames and attitude matrices are also described. Finally, the extension to circuits with more than three phases is presented. The features of the Frenet frame are illustrated through a variety of examples, including a case study based on the IEEE 39-bus system.

The paper discusses the relationships between electrical quantities, such as voltages, currents, and frequency, and geometrical ones, namely curvature and torsion. The proposed approach is based on the Frenet frame utilized in differential geometry and provides a general framework for the definition of the time derivative of electrical quantities in stationary as well as transient conditions. As a byproduct, the proposed approach unifies and generalizes the time- and phasor-domain frameworks. Other noteworthy results are a new interpretation of the link between frequency and the time derivatives of voltage and current; and a definition of the rate of change of frequency that includes the novel concept of “torsional frequency.” Several numerical examples based on balanced, unbalanced, harmonically-distorted and transient voltages illustrate the findings of the paper.

This work focuses on variable limits of conditional anti-windup PI-controller described in the IEEE Std. 421.5-2016 applied in the current limiters of VSC-based applications. To overcome deadlock and chattering during numerical simulation of the Std. conditional anti-windup with variable limits, it proposes a method for software implementation based on Filippov theory. The robustness of the proposed implementation is studied through a VSC-HVDC link included in the WSCC 9-bus system and through STATCOM included in the Nordic-32 system. The case studies compare wind up, back calculation type anti-windup and heuristic methods applied in the conditional anti-windup with the proposed solution.

This paper proposes to utilize intentional time delays as part of controllers to improve the damping of electromechanical oscillations of power systems. Through stability theory, the control parameter settings for which these delays in Power System Stabilizers (PSSs) improve the small signal stability of a power system are systematically identified, including the key parameter settings for which stability regions in the parameter plane remain connected for effective operation. The paper shows that PSSs with two control channels can be effectively designed to achieve best damping characteristics for a wide range of delays. Analytical results are presented on the One-Machine Infinite-Bus (OMIB) electromechanical power system model. To demonstrate the opportunities in more realistic dynamic models, our results are then implemented via numerical analysis on the IEEE standard 14-bus system.

Considering the increase in renewable generation and the consequent reduction in power system inertia, the Virtual Synchronous Machine (VSM) control method has been proposed to control power converters to emulate the inertia and other the characteristics of the synchronous machine. However, to achieve the function of VSM control, an extra energy base, typically storage, is required to connect to the controlled converter. In this work we investigate the application of the VSM control to the distribution system demand through the use of a VSM controlled smart transformer. Through control of the demand in this way, the demand itself can be used to emulate inertia and provide frequency support. This paper presents the details of the flexible demand control applied to a smart transformer supplying a low voltage distribution grid. The operation of the control is validated on scaled hardware using real time simulation with hardware in the loop. Simulations on a 400 kVA, 400 V distribution network are used to quantify the demand flexible. IEEE 39 bus is used to verify the benefit of the proposed control in terms of voltage and frequency in the power system.

This paper focuses on the small-signal stability analysis of systems modeled as Neutral Delay Differential Equations (NDDEs). These systems include delays in both the state variables and their first time derivatives. The proposed approach consists in descriptor model transformation that constructs an equivalent set of Delay Differential Algebraic Equations (DDAEs) of the original NDDE. The resulting DDAE is a non-index-1 Hessenberg form, whose characteristic equation consists of a series of infinite terms corresponding to infinitely many delays. Then, the effect on small-signal stability analysis is evaluated numerically through a Chebyshev discretization of the characteristic equations. Numerical appraisals focus on a variety of physical systems, including a population-growth model, a partial element equivalent circuit and a neutral delayed neural network.

Asynchronous iterations can be used to implement fixed-point methods such as Jacobi and Gauss-Seidel on parallel computers with high synchronization costs. However, they are rarely considered in practice due to the slow convergence rate. This paper describes an implementation on GPUs of a novel Power Flow analysis model using asynchronous iterations. We present our model for the solution of the Power Flow analysis problem, prove its convergence and evaluate its performance for a GPU execution.

This article addresses the execution cost of arithmetic operations with a focus on fuzzy arithmetic. Thanks to an appropriate representation format for fuzzy intervals, we show that it is possible to halve the number of operations and divide by 2 to 8 the memory requirements compared to conventional solutions. In addition, we demonstrate the benefit of some hardware features encountered in today’s accelerators (GPU) such as static rounding, memory usage, instruction-level parallelism (ILP), and thread-level parallelism (TLP). We then describe a library of fuzzy arithmetic operations written in CUDA and C++. The library is evaluated against traditional approaches using compute-bound and memory-bound benchmarks on Nvidia GPUs, with an observed performance gain of 2 to 20.