IEEE Electrification - March 2021 - 6

TECHNOLOGY LEADERS

The NERC, in coordination with
can also gather high-resolution,
industry partners, embarked on a
time-synchronized information from
multiyear project to better underacross North America to gain engistand the electromechanical modes
neering insights into how the overall
of each interconnecelectrical grid reacts
tion by collecting
to these types of
For every facility where events. No longer do
time-synchronized
high-resolution data
PMU data from RCs
we need to rely solely
and analyzing the
on models to provide
are available, there are
oscillatory response
predictions of what
a dozen facilities that
of the system followmay happen; we can
have little to none.
ing large disturbancd i re c t ly m e a s u re
es. Results from this
these abnormal
analysis provided the
events in the unlikely
oscillatory characteristics of each
situation that they occur.
interconnection, verifying some
For the 11 January incident, the
assumptions yet also uncovering
source of the oscillation was
new information regarding the elecremoved from the system by the
trical dynamics of the North Amerilocal plant operator, which took
can power grid. The success of such
actions to shut down the facility folanalyses hinges on the availability,
lowing identification of inadvertent
accuracy, and fidelity of the data
intercept valve operations due to the
being used. Offline engineering studfailure. High-speed, time-synchroies, such as the one focused on the 11
nized data picked up this disturbance
January disturbance, are examples of
as it transpired, but RCs lacked the
how data can help deepen our
real-time capabilities to identify the
understanding of the grid and fursource of the oscillation and take
ther enhance reliability. Not only can
coordinate action. Essentially, the
we identify a reliability issue, but we
oscillation event was captured in real

time, operators were limited in their
tools and capabilities, and, therefore,
the oscillation persisted for more
than 18 min until the local operator
removed the facility. Ultimately, the
persistent oscillation led to equipment damage at the generating facility that required weeks to fix, leading
to degraded reliability and significant
expense for the owner. So where can
we improve? The data are available,
but we need better sharing, a concerted effort to develop tools using
interconnection-wide information,
and coordinated operating procedures for managing wide-area disturbances. The industry is hard at work
on these efforts, and we expect that a
future event such as this will be mitigated in real time, enabling us to celebrate a success story.

Using High-Resolution
Data to Understand
Inverter-Based Resource
Performance
The Western Interconnection in
North America has observed multiple
fault events where solar PV resources

60.01
60.01

50 °N
60

Frequency (Hz)

59.99

59.99
40 °N

59.98

59.98
59.97

59.97

59.96

30 °N
59.95

59.95
105 °W
59.94
8:48:19 a.m. 8:48:41 a.m. 8:49:03 a.m. 8:49:25 a.m.

90 °W

75 °W

59.94
60 °W

Time (UTC)
(a)

(b)

Figure 1. (a) The GridEye/Frequency Monitoring Network (FNET) capture of the 11 January 2019 EI oscillation event. (b) The FNET data display
at 8:38:41.9 a.m. Coordinated Universal Time (UTC), 59.9741 Hz.

I E E E E l e c t r i f i cati o n M agaz ine / MARCH 2021

IEEE Electrification - March 2021

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Electrification - March 2021