abstract: This research develops decision support mechanisms for power system operation and planning practices. Contemporary industry practices rely on deterministic approaches to approximate system conditions and handle growing uncertainties from renewable resources. The primary purpose of this research is to identify soft spots of the contemporary industry practices and propose innovative algorithms, methodologies, and tools to improve economics and reliability in power systems. First, this dissertation focuses on transmission thermal constraint relaxation practices. Most system operators employ constraint relaxation practices, which allow certain constraints to be relaxed for penalty prices, in their market models. A proper selection of penalty prices is imperative due to the influence that penalty prices have on generation scheduling and market settlements. However, penalty prices are primarily decided today based on stakeholder negotiations or system operator’s judgments. There is little to no methodology or engineered approach around the determination of these penalty prices. This work proposes new methods that determine the penalty prices for thermal constraint relaxations based on the impact overloading can have on the residual life of the line. This study evaluates the effectiveness of the proposed methods in the short-term operational planning and long-term transmission expansion planning studies. The second part of this dissertation investigates an advanced methodology to handle uncertainties associated with high penetration of renewable resources, which poses new challenges to power system reliability and calls attention to include stochastic modeling within resource scheduling applications. However, the inclusion of stochastic modeling within mathematical programs has been a challenge due to computational complexities. Moreover, market design issues due to the stochastic market environment make it more challenging. Given the importance of reliable and affordable electric power, such a challenge to advance existing deterministic resource scheduling applications is critical. This ongoing and joint research attempts to overcome these hurdles by developing a stochastic look-ahead commitment tool, which is a stand-alone advisory tool. This dissertation contributes to the derivation of a mathematical formulation for the extensive form two-stage stochastic programming model, the utilization of Progressive Hedging decomposition algorithm, and the initial implementation of the Progressive Hedging subproblem along with various heuristic strategies to enhance the computational performance. / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation Electrical Engineering 2017

Cette thèse traite du problème d'observation et d'estimation des variables caractéristiques des systèmes dynamiques. Il s’agit d’une problématique fondamentale qui est au cœur de nombreux domaines relavant des sciences de l'ingénieur. Les travaux sont conduits dans un contexte ensembliste. Les techniques développées pour l’estimation de l’état et des variables d’entrées ont pour objectif final le contrôle de cohérence des systèmes non linéaires à temps continu. Une première approche conjugue les relations de parité et les différentiateurs à modes glissants pour l’estimation des entrées d’un système non linéaire. Les domaines des entrées compatibles avec les mesures sont alors reconstruits grâce à l’analyse par intervalles et aux techniques de satisfaction de contraintes. Il est montré que la relaxation des contraintes de stabilité/coopérativité pour la construction d’un observateur intervalle peut se faire grâce à des changements de base déterminés de différentes manières et pouvant être variants ou invariants dans le temps. Des simulations numériques illustrent les techniques proposées. Une application à un système aéronautique est également présentée à l’aide d’un jeu de données réelles. / This thesis deals with the problem of a dynamical system observation and the estimation of its characteristic variables; the latter point constitutes the core element in many engineering science fields. The final aim is to build a general framework for integrity control and fault detection of such systems within a bounded error context. The developments offered herein make use of parity relations, sliding mode differentiators, interval observers and constraint satisfaction problems. Input reconstruction techniques are developed for a general class of nonlinear continuous-time systems. Domains are reconstructed for the input values which are consistent with the measurements using interval analysis and constraint satisfaction techniques. It is shown that time-varying or invariant coordinate changes may relax the applicability conditions (stability/cooperativity) of the interval observer design methods. Sliding mode differentiators were also used to enhance interval observer accuracy. The proposed approaches are illustrated through computer simulations and they have been applied to aircraft servo loop control surface for robust and early detection of abnormal positions.