August 14, 2003 was just a start! It was followed by blackouts in London, Copenhagen and all of Italy. And almost everyone blamed market deregulation as the main culprit. Almost instantly, congressmen, senators, and "think-tank" advisors, became instant experts on power systems, the need to expand the transmission grid, the need to reform governmental policies, etc. The list continues to grow.
In November 1965, I was just a graduate student at MIT in Cambridge, Massachusetts, when the famous Northeast Blackout took place. At that time it was blamed on the lack of some form of central control to guarantee "on-line system reliability." A key result of this major disturbance was the emergence of NERC (North American Electric Reliability Council), the regional reliability councils, operating standards for interconnections, SCADA/EMS systems and others.
In examining the immediate response and later on, the studies that were carried out by NERC, FERC and EPRI[1], it is clear that we are entering a new era in the relentless attempt to guarantee system reliability. First, there is no question that in the new market, the business of regulation and oversight is complex, but there is a major benefit: transparency. By this I mean that by requiring strict standards on system reliability and security, the market can still function in light of two contributing factors: technology and concerted R&D efforts to guarantee these standards.
The main technology I am referring to is that of real-time systems with proper information exchange among ISO’s, RTO’s and control centers with wide-area components and also a predictive component for the next several hours, if not days. For example, the key problem of voltage collapse should be an integral component to an interconnection – but that requires a lot of technology: wide-area state estimation, voltage collapse prediction, allocation of reactive reserves[2], operating with optimal voltage profiles, etc. It is time to aggressively require state estimators, load forecasters, voltage stability applications, etc. to meet specific performance standards. Currently, each control center has its own requirements and in many cases, these applications are not even used.
The R&D effort has to focus on the overall issue of "market-based reliability and real-time security." Some of the key topics involved are:
- Aggressive testing of high-speed phasor measurements and their use in real-time state estimation and control applications
- Continued R&D into the voltage stability issue and its data requirements for real-time applications
- Impact of distributed generation on all the issues associated with system reliability. Although this competes with central power generation and high-voltage transmission, it adds to the reliability and security of the entire system,
- Study of financial risk issues of complex power systems using realistic power system models as the starting points,
- Study of defense measures whenever the system enters the alert state, or even the emergency state.
The funding of this R&D should be taken very, very seriously. The past 20 years or so, have witnessed a serious erosion of R&D funding. What has hurt us the most is the severe reduction in "basic research" funding, assuming that all the basic problems have been solved. In fact, we keep discovering more problems every day, but there are now new avenues for solving them.
Let’s hope that the 2003 blackouts are a "wake up call" the way the 1965 blackout was.
Stay tuned till next month. In the meantime, I appreciate your direct feedback – adebs@dsipower.com
[1] This is in the USA. However, the European Union and other entities in Asia and Latin America are active in these areas also.
[2] Standards for real-power reserves are well established, but more can be done.