Next Generation Information Communication Infrastructure and Case Studies for Future Power Systems

Abstract

As the power industry enters the new century, powerful driving forces, uncertainties and new services and functions are compelling electric utilities to make dramatic changes in the way they communicate. Expanding network services such as real time monitoring are also driving the need for more increasing bandwidth in the communication network backbone. These needs will grow further as new remote real-time protection and control applications become more feasible and pervasive. This dissertation addresses two main issues for the future power system information infrastructure: communication network infrastructure and associated power system applications.

Optical network no doubt will become the predominate network for the next generation power system communication. The rapid development of fiber optic network technology poses new challenges in the areas of topology design, network management and real time applications. Based on advanced fiber optic technologies, an all-fiber network was investigated and proposed. The study will cover the system architecture and data exchange protocol aspects.

High bandwidth, robust optical network could provide great opportunities to the power system for better service and efficient operation. In the dissertation, different applications were investigated. One of the typical applications is the SCADA information accessing system. An Internet-based application for the substation automation system will be presented. VLSI (Very Large Scale Integration) technology is also used for one-line diagrams auto-generation. High transition rate and low latency optical network is especially suitable for power system real time control. In the dissertation, a new local area network based Load Shedding Controller (LSC) for isolated power system will be presented. By using PMU and fiber optic network, an AGE (Area Generation Error) based accurate wide area load shedding scheme will also be proposed. The objective is to shed the load in the limited area with minimum disturbance.