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.

It is important to develop methods that are capable of successfully determining plant performance. The method used should be based on the ability to determine the performance of each of the various unit operations within the plant. This in turn will assist with the correct decision as to which unit in the plant should be improved first. The performance of the various units can be accumulated to give a representation of the performance of the entire plant. A plant-wide performance monitoring method has been developed to do just this. Originally it was developed for a specific unit operation. It has now been verified that this method is applicable to different unit operations. The method employed to determine this plant-wide performance is by evaluating how close the plant is to its inherent optimum. Where applicable, this inherent optimum can also be replaced with a user specified optimum. When an optimum is specified there is a possibility of oscillations around this “optimum” and the effects of this on the performance number are eliminated to give a more general plant-wide performance number for each unit operation. In addition to the “optimum” value selection the addition of performance weights to specific focus areas (utility usage or product quality) in the performance calculation will also improve the comparative nature of the plant-wide index for different unit operations. The scope of this investigation is limited to the experimental test rigs that were available in the Process Control Laboratory at the University of Pretoria. The methods that were used to determine the single loop performance of each of the different control loops are: <ul> <li>Minimum variance</li> <li>Generalised minimum variance</li> <li>Integral of the Absolute Error (IAE)</li> <li>Integral of the Square Error (ISE)</li> </ul> The single loop performance methods are required to determine how effectively the plant-wide performance index evaluates the plant, since these are existing means of determining how well a plant is operating, but these become impractical due to excessive amounts of information needing evaluation. / Dissertation (MEng)--University of Pretoria, 2008. / Chemical Engineering / unrestricted