Structural emergency control for power grids

Abstract

In this paper, we introduce a structural emergency control to render post-fault dynamics of power systems from the critical fault-cleared state to a stable equilibrium point (EP). Theoretically, this is a new control paradigm that does not rely on any continuous measurement or load shedding, as in the classical setup. Instead, the grid is made stable by intentionally changing the power network structure, and thereby, discretely relocating the EP and its stability region such that the system is consecutively driven from fault-cleared state through a set of EPs to the desired EP. The proposed control is designed by solving convex optimization problems, making it possibly scalable to large-scale power grids. In the practical side, the proposed control can be implemented by exploiting the FACTS devices that will be widely available on the grids, and hence, requiring minor investment.