In the aftermath of the wave of blackouts that affected US, UK and mainland Europe utilities in 2003 and 2004, renewed attention has been focused on maintaining the highest level of reliability and security in the operation of power systems. The lack of adequate transmission infrastructure as well as real-time tools aimed at detecting and alarming system conditions have also been highlighted. In this context, the need to assess stability and predict the risk of blackout in real-time has become particularly relevant. Early work in this field documented in technical papers published throughout the 1990s and early 2000s underlined the importance of performing stability assessment in real-time. While static security assessment is conceptually straightforward, innovative approaches are needed to combine it with dynamic security assessment to develop an overall scheme so that results can be used for on-line decision-making. On October 13, 2004, the IEEE Power Systems Conference and Exposition 2004 hosted the ‘Real-Time Stability Challenge’ panel session. Organized by the Power System Dynamic Performance Committee, the panel was a forum for presenting progress achieved in this field, discussing new ideas, and identifying the challenges to be met in the course of future research. Real-Time Stability in Power Systems: Techniques for Early Detection of the Risk of Blackout is built around most of the panel papers, updated and expanded by the authors with the new material relevant to the panel theme. The chapters are contributed by well known experts in the field, thus providing an authoritative reference on the theory and implementation of real-time stability assessment -- one of the critical topics of the day. Some of the issues discussed in the book include, but are not limited to: *Stability limits and how to objectively define them, *Techniques for defining and measuring the distance to instability, *The characterization of the risk of blackout, *Discussion of quick, approximate methods to filter out non-critical contingencies and do a detailed simulation only of those that result in limit violations, *Theoretical description and practical experience with real-time and/or near real-time stability applications available today in the SCADA/EMS industry.

This pioneering volume has been updated and enriched to reflect the state-of-the-art in blackout prediction and prevention. It documents and explains background and algorithmic aspects of the most successful steady-state, transient and voltage stability solutions available today in real-time. It also describes new, cutting-edge stability applications of synchrophasor technology, and captures industry acceptance of metrics and visualization tools that quantify and monitor the distance to instability. Expert contributors review a broad spectrum of additionally available techniques, such as trajectory sensitivities, ensuring this volume remains the definitive resource for industry practitioners and academic researchers in this critical area of power system operations.

This book answers the need for a practical, hands-on guide for assessing power stability in real time, rather than in offline simulations. Since the book is primarily geared toward the practical aspects of the subject, theoretical background is reduced to the strictest minimum. For the benefit of readers who may not be quite familiar with the underlying theoretical techniques, appendices describing key algorithms and theoretical issues are included at the end of the book. It is an excellent source for researchers, professionals, and advanced undergraduate and graduate students.

This book brings together real-world accounts of using voltage stability assessment (VSA) and transient stability assessment (TSA) tools for grid management. Chapters are written by leading experts in the field who have used these tools to manage their grids and can provide readers with a unique and international perspective. Case studies and success stories are presented by those who have used these tools in the field, making this book a useful reference for different utilities worldwide that are looking into implementing these tools, as well as students and practicing engineers who are interested in learning the real-time applications of VSA and TSA for grid operation.

Modern power and energy systems are characterized by the wide integration of distributed generation, storage and electric vehicles, adoption of ICT solutions, and interconnection of different energy carriers and consumer engagement, posing new challenges and creating new opportunities. Advanced testing and validation methods are needed to efficiently validate power equipment and controls in the contemporary complex environment and support the transition to a cleaner and sustainable energy system. Real-time hardware-in-the-loop (HIL) simulation has proven to be an effective method for validating and de-risking power system equipment in highly realistic, flexible, and repeatable conditions. Controller hardware-in-the-loop (CHIL) and power hardware-in-the-loop (PHIL) are the two main HIL simulation methods used in industry and academia that contribute to system-level testing enhancement by exploiting the flexibility of digital simulations in testing actual controllers and power equipment. This book addresses recent advances in real-time HIL simulation in several domains (also in new and promising areas), including technique improvements to promote its wider use. It is composed of 14 papers dealing with advances in HIL testing of power electronic converters, power system protection, modeling for real-time digital simulation, co-simulation, geographically distributed HIL, and multiphysics HIL, among other topics.

Power systems are evolving towards the Smart Grid paradigm, featured by large-scale integration of renewable energy resources, e.g. wind and solar power, deeper participation of demand side, and enhanced interaction with electric vehicles. While these emerging elements are inherently stochastic in nature, they are creating a challenge to the system’s stability and its control. In this context, conventional analysis tools are becoming less effective, and necessitate the use alternative tools that are able to deal with the high uncertainty and variability in the smart grid. Smart Grid initiatives have facilitated wide-spread deployment of advanced sensing and communication infrastructure, e.g. phasor measurement units at grid level and smart meters at household level, which collect tremendous amount of data in various time and space scales. How to fully utilize the data and extract useful knowledge from them, is of great importance and value to support the advanced stability assessment and control of the smart grid. The intelligent system strategy has been identified as an effective approach to meet the above needs. This book presents the cutting-edge intelligent system techniques and their applications for stability assessment and control of power systems. The major topics covered in this book are: Intelligent system design and algorithms for on-line stability assessment, which aims to use steady-state operating variables to achieve fast stability assessment for credible contingencies. Intelligent system design and algorithms for preventive stability control, which aims at transparent and interpretable decision-making on preventive control actions to manipulate system operating condition against possible contingencies. Intelligent system design and algorithms for real-time stability prediction, which aims to use synchronized measurements to foresee the stability status under an ongoing disturbance. Intelligent system design and algorithms for emergency stability control, which aims at fast decision-making on stability control actions at emergency stage where instability is propagating. Methodologies and algorithms for improving the robustness of intelligent systems against missing-data issues. This book is a reference and guide for researchers, students, and engineers who seek to study and design intelligent systems to resolve stability assessment and control problems in the smart grid age.