The Internet Based real-time GPS synchronized wide-area Frequency Monitoring Network (FNET) is an extremely low cost and quickly deployable wide-area frequency measurement system with high dynamic accuracy which consists of Frequency Disturbance Recorder (FDR) distributed to more than 100 places around North America and an Information Management System situated at Virginia Tech. Since its first FDR deployment in 2003, the FNET system has been proved to be able to reliably receive phasor data accurately measured at and instantaneously sent via the Internet from different locations of interest, and efficiently run the analyzing program to detect and record significant system disturbances and subsequently estimate the location of disturbance center, namely the event location, in the electric grid based on the information gathered. The excellent performance of the FNET system so far has made power grid situation awareness and monitoring based on distribution level frequency measurements a reality, and thus advances our understanding of power system dynamics to a higher level and in a broader dimensionality. Chapter 1 and Chapter 2 of this dissertation briefly introduce the genesis and the architecture of the FNET system, followed by a summary of its concrete implementations. Chapter 3 and Chapter 4 outline FNET frequency estimation algorithm and phase angle estimation algorithm, including their attributes and the new methodologies to enhance them. In Chapter 5, the report discusses the algorithms developed at FNET to detect the frequency disturbance and estimate the disturbance location by the triangulation procedure using real-time frequency data and geographic topology of the FNET units in the power grid where the disturbance occurs. Then, the dissertation proceeds to introduce the FNET angle-based power system oscillation detection and present some research about Matrix Pencil Modal Analysis of FNET phase angle oscillation data in the following two chapters. Lastly, the content of this report is summarized and the future work envisioned in Chapter 8. / Ph. D.

This study selects several new advanced topics in power systems, and verifies their usefulness using the simulation. In the study on ratio of the equivalent reactance and resistance of the bulk power systems, the simulation results give us the more correct value of X/R of the bulk power system, which can explain why the active power compensation is also important in voltage flicker mitigation. In the application study of the Energy Storage System(ESS) to the wind power, the new model implementation of the ESS connected to the wind power is proposed, and the control effect of ESS to the intermittency of the wind power is verified. Also this study conducts the intensive simulations for clarifying the behavior of the wide-area power system frequency as well as the possibility of the on-line instability detection. In our POWER IT Laboratory, since 2003, the U.S. national frequency monitoring network (FNET) has been being continuously operated to monitor the wide-area power system frequency in the U.S. Using the measured frequency data, the event of the power system is triggered, and its location and scale are estimated. This study also looks for the possibility of using the simulation technologies to contribute the applications of FNET, finds similarity of the event detection orders between the frequency measurements and the simulations in the U.S. Eastern power grid, and develops the new methodology for estimating the event location based on the simulated N-1 contingencies using the frequency measurement. It has been pointed out that the simulation results can not represent the actual response of the power systems due to the inevitable limit of modeling power systems and different operating conditions of the systems at every second. However, in the circumstances that we need to test such an important infrastructure supplying the electric energy without taking any risk of it, the software based simulation will be the best solution to verify the new technologies in power system engineering and, for doing this, new models and better application of the simulation should be proposed. Conducting extensive simulation studies, this dissertation verified that the actual X/R ratio of the bulk power systems is much lower than what has been known as its typical value, showed the effectiveness of the ESS control to mitigate the intermittence of the wind power from the perspective of the power grid using the newly proposed simulation model of ESS connected to the wind power, and found many characteristics of the wide-area frequency wave propagation. Also the possibility of using the simulated responses of the power system for replacing the measured data could be confirmed and this is very promising to the future application of the simulation to the on-line analysis of the power systems based on the FNET measurements. / Ph. D.

Wide Area Measurements (WAMs) have been widely used in the energy management system (EMS) of power system for monitoring, operation and control. In recent years, the advent of synchronized Phasor Measurements Unit (PMU) has added another dimension to the field of wide-area measurement. However, the high cost of the PMU, which includes the manufacture and deployment fee, is a hurdle to the wide use of the PMU in power systems. Unlike traditional PMUs, the frequency monitoring network (FNET) developed by the Virginia Tech Power IT lab is an Internet—based, GPS—synchronized, wide-area frequency monitoring network deployed at the distribution level, providing a low-cost and easily deployable WAMs solution. In this dissertation, the research work can be categorized into two parts: FNET Design and Situation Awareness Algorithm Development. / Ph. D.