IEEE Power & Energy Magazine - November/December 2021 - 46

While contributing toward sustainability goals, these trends
can potentially compromise the primary objective of a power
system given existing planning and operational paradigms.
To continue to meet the primary objective as power systems transition,
advances in the operation and planning of the power
system are required. To meet this need, several system operators
on the cutting edge of this transition have collaborated
with technical institutions around the world to create the
Global Power System Transformation (G-PST) Consortium.
The consortium aims to support advanced system operator
research, development activities, and all system operators
globally with knowledge and training as they transform their
power systems.
Following an extensive and rigorous process, the G-PST
Consortium defined a common research agenda to advance
the operations and planning of power systems for the transition.
The agenda seeks to include all possible advancements,
from fundamental to applied research, driving solutions that
are expected (but not assumed) to be globally applicable to
all system operators. The advancements will vary by system
and range from simple modifications of existing technologies
and practices to fundamentally new and better ways to
plan and/or operate the power systems of the future.
The initial research agenda focuses on near-term issues
(i.e., over the next decade) and includes technical aspects of
operational and planning activities within the bulk power
system. While other issues like planning and operating
DERs, sector coupling (including power-to-X), electricity
market design, and regulatory and policy topics are respectfully
acknowledged, they have been set aside to varying
extents as " out of scope " for this initial phase of the G-PST
research agenda. Note, " out of scope " does not imply that
these issues will be ignored. These interface issues must be
represented in a meaningful and appropriate manner and are
presently treated tangentially in the research agenda.
Fifty-nine research questions were organized according
to their primary membership among six groupings that
represent themed " research programs, " as depicted in Table 1. The
questions have varying degrees of overlap and possible redundancy,
and they are tightly coupled with many dependencies.
The questions could easily be replaced with a smaller or larger
number that covers the research landscape equally well.
Inverters, Inverters,
and More Inverters
The displacement of synchronous generation with IBRs, the
addition of loads connected via inverters, and the increasing
prominence of energy-storage devices in IBR form are changing
the fundamental synchronous nature of the bulk power
system. To maintain high levels of reliability in the system,
the designs of both the bulk power system and IBRs have to
change, and existing operating and planning practices will
need to adapt. This is not a case of an IBR-dominated system
being less or more reliable than a synchronous system. It is a
case that they are in many ways different, and the differences
must be reflected in the design, analysis, operations, planning,
forecasting, and risk management of power systems.
Incremental tweaking and artificially forcing IBRs to
look like synchronous machines is a limited short-term
strategy that does not leverage the true potential of IBRs.
IBRs can be highly flexible and controllable. Because of
this, there may be opportunities to make IBRs behave better
than synchronous machines in some respects. However, the
control algorithms that dictate the response of IBRs to grid
conditions vary across inverter designs and manufacturers.
Furthermore, the algorithms can interact at both local and
system-wide levels and with other elements in the power system,
such as high-voltage dc transmission terminals. This
dramatically complicates the analysis of IBRs in the power
system and may lead to stability challenges.
table 1. Summary of the research agenda.
Research Program
Inverter Design
Stability Tools
and Methods
Control Room of
the Future
Planning
Restoration and
Black Start
Services
Description
Development of capabilities, services, design methodologies, and standards
for IBRs
Development of new tools and methods as well as modifications or supplements
to existing tools and methods, required to ensure reliability, security, and stability
in power systems
Development of new technologies and approaches for enhanced real-time
visibility and analysis in power system operator control rooms
New planning metrics, methods, and tools to capture the characteristics and
influence of a changing resource mix
Creating new procedures for black-starting and restoring a power system with
high or 100% IBR penetrations
Quantifying the technical service requirements of future power systems to
maintain the supply-demand balance reliably and at least cost
46
ieee power & energy magazine
Number of
Questions
11
8
17
15
1
7
november/december 2021
IEEE Power & Energy Magazine - November/December 2021

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