The strain on modern electrical power systems has led to an ever-increasing utilization of new information and communication technologies (ICT) to improve their efficiency and reliability. Wide area monitoring and control (WAMC) systems offer many opportunities to improve the real-time situational awareness in the power system. These systems are essen-tially SCADA systems but with continuous streaming of measurement data from the power system. The quality of WAMC systems and the applications running on top of them are heavily, but not exclusively, dependent on the underlying non-functional quality of the ICT systems. From an ICT perspective, the real-time nature of WAMC systems makes them susceptible to variations in the quality of the supporting ICT systems. The non-functional qualities studied as part of this research are performance, interoperability and cyber security. To analyze the performance of WAMC ICT systems, WAMC applications were identified, and their requirements were elicited. Furthermore, simulation models capturing typical utility communication infrastructure architectures were implemented. The simulation studies were carried out to identify and characterize the latency in these systems and its impact on data quality in terms of the data loss. While performance is a major and desirable quality, other non-functional qualities such as interoperability and cyber security have a significant impact on the usefulness of the sys-tem. To analyze these non-functional qualities, an enterprise architecture (EA) based framework for the modeling and analysis of interoperability and cyber security, specialized for WAMC systems, is proposed. The framework also captures the impact of cyber security on the interoperability of WAMC systems. Finally, a prototype WAMC system was imple-mented to allow the validation of the proposed EA based framework. The prototype is based on existing and adopted open-source frameworks and libraries. The research described in this thesis makes several contributions. The work is a systematic approach for the analysis of the non-functional quality of WAMC ICT systems as a basis for establishing the suitability of ICT system architectures to support WAMC applications. This analysis is accomplished by first analyzing the impact of communication architectures for WAMC systems on the latency. Second, the impact of these latencies on the data quali-ty, specifically data currency (end to end delay of the phasor measurements) and data in-completeness (i.e., the percentage of phasor measurements lost in the communication), is analyzed. The research also provides a framework for interoperability and cyber security analysis based on a probabilistic Monte Carlo enterprise architecture method. Additionally, the framework captures the possible impact of cyber security on the interoperability of WAMC data flows. A final result of the research is a test bed where WAMC applications can be deployed and ICT architectures tested in a controlled but realistic environment. / <p>QC 20130218</p>

<p>Today’s electrical transmission & distribution systems, are facing a number of challenges related to changing environmental, technical and business factors. Among these factors are, increased environmental restrictions leading to higher share of production from renewable and uncontrollable sources as well as local environmental concerns regarding construction of new transmission and distribution lines. The re-regulation of the electricity market has created a dynamic environment in which multiple organizations have to coordinate and cooperate in the operation and control of the power system. Finally, the high rate of devel-opment within the ICT field is creating many new opportunities for power system opera-tion and control, thanks to introduction of new technologies for measurement, communi-cation and automation.</p><p>As a result of these factors, Wide Area Monitoring and Control (WAMC) systems have been proposed. WAMC systems utilize new ICT based technologies to offer more accurate and timely data on the state of the power system. WAMC systems utilize Phasor Measure-ment Units (PMUs) that have higher data rates and are time synchronised using, GPS satel-lites. This allows synchronized observation of the dynamics of the power system, making it possible to manage the system at a more efficient and responsive level and apply wide area control and protection schemes. The success WAMC systems, on the other hand, are largely dependent on the performance of the Information and Communication Technology (ICT) infrastructure that would support them.</p><p>This thesis investigates the requirements on, and suitability of the ICT systems that support WAMC systems. This was done by identifying WAMC applications and the elicitation of their requirements. Furthermore, a set of simulation projects were carried out to determine the communication system characteristics such as delay and the impact of this delay on the WAMC system.</p><p>This thesis has several contributions. First, it provides summary and analysis of WAMC application priorities and requirements in the Nordic region. Secondly it provides simula-tion based comparison and evaluation of communication paradigms for WAMC systems. The research documented in this thesis addresses these paradigms by providing a compari-son and evaluation through simulation. Thirdly, the thesis provides insight to the possible sources of delay in WAMC architecture and the impact of these delays on data quality specifically data incompleteness. This provides insight on what applications are important to practitioners and what is the expected performance of these applications, as seen from the power system control and operation point of view.</p>

The strain on modern electrical power system operation has led to an ever increasing utilization of new Information Communication Technology (ICT) systems to enhance the reliability and efficiency of grid operation. Among these proposals, Phasor Measurement Unit (PMU)-based Wide-Area Monitoring and Control (WAMC) systems have been recognized as one of the enablers of “Smart Grid”, particularly at the transmission level, due to their capability to improve the real-time situational awareness of the grid. These systems differ from the conventional Supervisory Control And Data Acquisition (SCADA) systems in that they provide globally synchronized measurements at high resolutions. On the other hand, the WAMC systems also impose several stringent requirements on the underlying ICT systems, including performance, security, and availability, etc. As a result, the functionality of the WAMC applications is heavily, but not exclusively, dependent on the capabilities of the underlying ICT systems. This tight coupling makes it difficult to fully exploit the benefits of the synchrophasor technology without the proper design and configuration of ICT systems to support the WAMC applications. The strain on modern electrical power system operation has led to an ever increasing utilization of new Information Communication Technology (ICT) systems to enhance the reliability and efficiency of grid operation. Among these proposals, Phasor Measurement Unit (PMU)-based Wide-Area Monitoring and Control (WAMC) systems have been recognized as one of the enablers of “Smart Grid”, particularly at the transmission level, due to their capability to improve the real-time situational awareness of the grid. These systems differ from the conventional Supervisory Control And Data Acquisition (SCADA) systems in that they provide globally synchronized measurements at high resolutions. On the other hand, the WAMC systems also impose several stringent requirements on the underlying ICT systems, including performance, security, and availability, etc. As a result, the functionality of the WAMC applications is heavily, but not exclusively, dependent on the capabilities of the underlying ICT systems. This tight coupling makes it difficult to fully exploit the benefits of the synchrophasor technology without the proper design and configuration of ICT systems to support the WAMC applications. In response to the above challenges, this thesis addresses the dependence of WAMC applications on the underlying ICT systems. Specifically, two of the WAMC system data quality attributes, latency and completeness, are examined together with their effects on a typical WAMC application, PMU-based wide-area damping systems. The outcomes of this research include quantified results in the form of PMU communication delays and data frame losses, and probability distributions that can model the PMU communication delays. Moreover, design requirements are determined for the wide-area damping systems, and three different delay-robust designs for this WAMC application are validated based on the above results. Finally, a virtual PMU is developed to perform power system and communication network co-simulations. The results reported by this thesis offer a prospect for better predictions of the performance of the supporting ICT systems in terms of PMU data latency and completeness. These results can be further used to design and optimize the WAMC applications and their underlying ICT systems in an integrated manner. This thesis also contributes a systematic approach to design the wide-area damping system considering the PMU data latency and completeness. Finally, the developed virtual PMU, as part of a co-simulation platform, provides a means to investigate the dependence of WAMC applications on the capabilities of the underlying ICT systems in a cost-efficient manner. / <p>QC 20131015</p>

Today’s electrical transmission &amp; distribution systems, are facing a number of challenges related to changing environmental, technical and business factors. Among these factors are, increased environmental restrictions leading to higher share of production from renewable and uncontrollable sources as well as local environmental concerns regarding construction of new transmission and distribution lines. The re-regulation of the electricity market has created a dynamic environment in which multiple organizations have to coordinate and cooperate in the operation and control of the power system. Finally, the high rate of devel-opment within the ICT field is creating many new opportunities for power system opera-tion and control, thanks to introduction of new technologies for measurement, communi-cation and automation. As a result of these factors, Wide Area Monitoring and Control (WAMC) systems have been proposed. WAMC systems utilize new ICT based technologies to offer more accurate and timely data on the state of the power system. WAMC systems utilize Phasor Measure-ment Units (PMUs) that have higher data rates and are time synchronised using, GPS satel-lites. This allows synchronized observation of the dynamics of the power system, making it possible to manage the system at a more efficient and responsive level and apply wide area control and protection schemes. The success WAMC systems, on the other hand, are largely dependent on the performance of the Information and Communication Technology (ICT) infrastructure that would support them. This thesis investigates the requirements on, and suitability of the ICT systems that support WAMC systems. This was done by identifying WAMC applications and the elicitation of their requirements. Furthermore, a set of simulation projects were carried out to determine the communication system characteristics such as delay and the impact of this delay on the WAMC system. This thesis has several contributions. First, it provides summary and analysis of WAMC application priorities and requirements in the Nordic region. Secondly it provides simula-tion based comparison and evaluation of communication paradigms for WAMC systems. The research documented in this thesis addresses these paradigms by providing a compari-son and evaluation through simulation. Thirdly, the thesis provides insight to the possible sources of delay in WAMC architecture and the impact of these delays on data quality specifically data incompleteness. This provides insight on what applications are important to practitioners and what is the expected performance of these applications, as seen from the power system control and operation point of view.

The rapidly expanding power system grid infrastructure and the need to reduce the occurrence of major blackouts and prevention or hardening of systems against cyber-attacks, have led to increased interest in the improved resilience of the electrical grid. Distributed and decentralized control have been widely applied to computer science research. However, for power system applications, the real-time application of decentralized and distributed control algorithms introduce several challenges. In this dissertation, new algorithms and methods for decentralized control, protection and energy management of Wide Area Monitoring, Protection and Control (WAMPAC) and the Active Distribution Network (ADN) are developed to improve the resiliency of the power system. To evaluate the findings of this dissertation, a laboratory-scale integrated Wide WAMPAC and ADN control platform was designed and implemented. The developed platform consists of phasor measurement units (PMU), intelligent electronic devices (IED) and programmable logic controllers (PLC). On top of the designed hardware control platform, a multi-agent cyber-physical interoperability viii framework was developed for real-time verification of the developed decentralized and distributed algorithms using local wireless and Internet-based cloud communication. A novel real-time multiagent system interoperability testbed was developed to enable utility independent private microgrids standardized interoperability framework and define behavioral models for expandability and plug-and-play operation. The state-of-theart power system multiagent framework is improved by providing specific attributes and a deliberative behavior modeling capability. The proposed multi-agent framework is validated in a laboratory based testbed involving developed intelligent electronic device prototypes and actual microgrid setups. Experimental results are demonstrated for both decentralized and distributed control approaches. A new adaptive real-time protection and remedial action scheme (RAS) method using agent-based distributed communication was developed for autonomous hybrid AC/DC microgrids to increase resiliency and continuous operability after fault conditions. Unlike the conventional consecutive time delay-based overcurrent protection schemes, the developed technique defines a selectivity mechanism considering the RAS of the microgrid after fault instant based on feeder characteristics and the location of the IEDs. The experimental results showed a significant improvement in terms of resiliency of microgrids through protection using agent-based distributed communication.

Doctor of Philosophy / Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering / Don Gruenbacher / Caterina Scoglio / Cyber physical systems emerge when physical systems are integrated with communication networks. In particular, communication networks facilitate dissemination of data among components of physical systems to meet key requirements, such as efficiency and reliability, in achieving an objective. In this dissertation, we consider one of the most important cyber physical systems: the smart grid. The North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC) envisions a smart grid that aggressively explores advance communication network solutions to facilitate real-time monitoring and dynamic control of the bulk electric power system. At the distribution level, the smart grid integrates renewable generation and energy storage mechanisms to improve reliability of the grid. Furthermore, dynamic pricing and demand management provide customers an avenue to interact with the power system to determine electricity usage that satisfies their lifestyle. At the transmission level, efficient communication and a highly automated architecture provide visibility in the power system; hence, faults are mitigated faster than they can propagate. However, higher levels of reliability and efficiency rely on the supporting physical communication infrastructure and the network technologies employed. Conventionally, the topology of the communication network tends to be identical to that of the power network. In this dissertation, however, we employ a Demand Response (DR) application to illustrate that a topology that may be ideal for the power network may not necessarily be ideal for the communication network. To develop this illustration, we realize that communication network issues, such as congestion, are addressed by protocols, middle-ware, and software mechanisms. Additionally, a network whose physical topology is designed to avoid congestion realizes an even higher level of performance. For this reason, characterizing the communication infrastructure of smart grids provides mechanisms to improve performance while minimizing cost. Most recently, algebraic connectivity has been used in the ongoing research effort characterizing the robustness of networks to failures and attacks. Therefore, we first derive analytical methods for increasing algebraic connectivity and validate these methods numerically. Secondly, we investigate impact on the topology and traffic characteristics as algebraic connectivity is increased. Finally, we construct a DR application to demonstrate how concepts from graph theory can dramatically improve the performance of a communication network. With a hybrid simulation of both power and communication network, we illustrate that a topology which may be ideal for the power network may not necessarily be ideal for the communication network. To date, utility companies are embracing network technologies such as Multiprotocol Label Switching (MPLS) because of the available support for legacy devices, traffic engineering, and virtual private networks (VPNs) which are essential to the functioning of the smart grid. Furthermore, this particular network technology meets the requirement of non-routability as stipulated by NERC, but these benefits are costly for the infrastructure that supports the full MPLS specification. More importantly, with MPLS routing and other switching technologies, innovation is restricted to the features provided by the equipment. In particular, no practical method exists for utility consultants or researchers to test new ideas, such as alternatives to IP or MPLS, on a realistic scale in order to obtain the experience and confidence necessary for real-world deployments. As a result, novel ideas remain untested. On the contrary, OpenFlow, which has gained support from network providers such as Microsoft and Google and equipment vendors such as NEC and Cisco, provides the programmability and flexibility necessary to enable innovation in next-generation communication architectures for the smart grid. This level of flexibility allows OpenFlow to provide all features of MPLS and allows OpenFlow devices to co-exist with existing MPLS devices. Therefore, in this dissertation we explore a low-cost OpenFlow Software Defined Networking solution and compare its performance to that of MPLS. In summary, we develop methods for designing robust networks and evaluate software defined networking for communication and control in cyber physical systems where the smart grid is the system under consideration.

The use of electricity from Distributed Energy Resources like wind and solar powerwill impact the performance of the electricity network and this sets a limit to theamount of such renewables that can be connected. Investment in energy storage andcommunication technologies enables more renewables by operating the networkcloser to its limits. Electricity networks using such novel techniques are referred toas “Smart Grids”. Under favourable conditions the use of these techniques is analternative to traditional network planning like replacement of transformers orconstruction of new power line.The Hosting Capacity is an objective metric to determine the limit of an electricitynetwork to integrate new consumption or production. The goal is to create greatercomparability and transparency, thereby improving the factual base of discussionsbetween network operators and owners of Distributed Energy Resources on thequantity and type of generation that can be connected to a network. This thesisextends the Hosting Capacity method to the application of storage and curtailmentand develops additional metrics such as the Hosting Capacity Coefficient.The research shows how the different intermittency of renewables and consumptionaffect the Hosting Capacity. Several case studies using real production andconsumption measurements are presented. Focus is on how the permitted amountof renewables can be extended by means of storage, curtailment and advanceddistributed protection and control schemes. / Användningen av el från förnyelsebara energikällor som vind och sol kommer att påverka elnätet, som sätter en gräns för hur mycket distribuerad energiproduktion som kan anslutas. Investeringar i storskalig energilager och användning av modern kommunikationsteknologi gör det möjligt att öka andelen förnyelsebarenergi genom att nätet kan drivas närmare sina gränser. Elnät med sådana nya tekniker kallas ofta för ”Smarta Elnät". Implementering av sådana smarta elnät kan vara ett alternativ till traditionell nätplanering och åtgärder som utbyte av transformatorer eller konstruktion av nya kraftledningen.Nätets acceptansgräns är ett objektivt mått för att bestämma gränsen för nätets förmåga att integrera ny förbrukning eller produktion. Målet är att skapa större transparens och bidra till ett bättre faktaunderlag i diskussioner mellan nätoperatörer och ägare av distribuerade energiresurser. Denna avhandling utökar acceptansgränsmetoden för tillämpning med energilager och produktions nedstyrning och utvecklar ytterligare begrepp så som acceptansgränsen koefficienten.Forskningen visar hur varierbarheten hos olika förnyelsebara energikällor samverkar med förbrukningen och påverkar nätets acceptansgräns. Flera fallstudier från verkliga elnät och med uppmätt produktion och konsumtion presenteras. Fokus är på hur den tillåtna mängden förnyelsebara energikällor kan ökas med hjälp av energilagring, kontrollerad produktionsnedstyrning och med avancerad distribuerade skydd och kontroll applikationer. / Nicholas Etherden works at STRI AB (www.stri.se) in Gothenburg, Sweden. When he is not pursuing his half-time PhD studies he works as a specialist consultant in the field of Power Utility Automation, specialising on the IEC 61850 standard for power utility automation (today widely used in substations as well as some wind parks, hydro plants and DER and Smart Grid applications such as vehicle-to-grid integration). The author of this thesis received his Master of Science in Engineering Physics from Uppsala University 2000. Side tracks during his engineering studies included studies in theoretical philosophy, chemistry, ecology and environmental sciences as well as chairing the Swedish student committee of the Pugwash Conferences on Science and Worlds Affairs and later board member of the International Network of Engineers and of Scientists for Global Responsibility (INES) and chair of Swedish Scientists and Engineers Against Nuclear Arms. He has been a trainee at ABB in Västerås Sweden and spent six years as developer and team leader for the application development of a new relay protection family (ABB IED 670 series). In parallel to his professional work he studied power system engineering at Mälardalens University and travelled to all continents of the world. Since 2008 he is responsible for the STRI IEC 61850 Independent Interoperability Laboratory and a member of IEC Technical Committee 57 working group 10 "Power system communication and associated data models” and UCA/IEC 61850 User group testing subcommittee. He is co-author of IEC 61850-1 and main contributor to “Technical Report on Functional Test of IEC 61850 systems” and has held over 25 hands-on courses around the world on IEC 61850 “Communication networks and systems for power utility automation”. / SmartGrid Energilager