Intelligent Self-Describing Controllable Electric Power Grid

Anurag Srivastava, Noel N. Schulz, Nicolas Younan, Roger King, Srinath Kamireddy,
and Bharath Ravulapati, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Kari Babski-Reeves and David Close, Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering
Surya Durbha, GeoResources Institute
Mississippi State University

Abstract
Electric power grids are a key network in both day-to-day activities and in recovery efforts following natural disasters. This complex system may also be subject to blackouts caused by system instabilities or external threats. A key infrastructure issue relates to
the models, studies and simulations of this complex network system, especially in the Gulf Coast region, which is vulnerable to hurricanes. It is necessary for electric utilities to handle these extreme conditions and recover as quickly as possible. Researchers at
Mississippi State University with the help of regional utilities are working to develop a tool based on detailed power system analysis and a semantic-based ontology to provide web-based information and decision support. During a recent hurricane, one utility in
Mississippi was able to restore power to customers in an efficient way using intentional islanding. System separation or intentional islanding of the electric grid should be done in an effective way to help restoration and not create system instabilities.
Electric network state data and up-to-date measurements will be published on the web and feature extraction will be done using ontology web language (OWL). Comprehensive power system analysis is progressing to develop a rule based-system to highlight
methods for system separation and other restoration techniques. A visualization tool that incorporates operators in the decision loop can provide demand based situational awareness and decision support to provide assistance to utilities in extreme conditions.

Project Overview and Description

MSU Project Team Industrial Partners Objectives
• To develop semantic driven ontology based information services for wide area monitoring
Dr. Nick Younan Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) of the electric power grid.
Principal Investigator • Specifically, the project is focused on response-based remedial action schemes (RAS) and
South Mississippi Electric Power Association (SMEPA)
restoration techniques that can be used to mitigate cascading blackouts and severe
Southern Company (SoCo)
contingencies via system separations (islanding), distributed generation and conventional
Drs. Roger King/ Dr. Noel Schulz Dr. Kari Babski-Reeves Alabama Power Company (APC) techniques.
Nick Younan Power System Lead Human Factor Lead Mississippi Power Company (MPC) • The semantics driven information services will provide critical information and a course
Ontology Development Lead of action in a timely fashion to system operators.
Dr. Anurag Srivastava • This will be enhanced with new visualization schemes that are based on operator cognitive
Dr. Surya Durbha David Close task analysis (CTA).
2 Graduate Students
Srinath Kamireddy
Bharath Ravulapati
Electric Power Grid Control
Post-contingencies studies show that based on system states, and with proper
Power System Research Activities
decision support system, decisions can be taken in advance as well as in real time
Grid Complexity and Problems to avoid the blackouts and to restore the power more efficiently. Researchers are working on developing or modifying CIM for sensor data and developing rule bases for
remedial action schemes and restoration during extreme contingencies by doing detailed power system
Steady State analysis on 38-bus power system in PowerWorld 12.0. Work related to the investigation of state
Control
• Highly nonlinear system, aging infrastructure, power market, transmission expansion to estimation algorithms in the case of lost state data is also in progress.
meet growing demands, congestion management, handling distributed resources, dynamic State Data SCADA/EMS Feedback
Based Control
reactive compensation, reliability coordination, need for oversight or regulatory audits, Simulate N-1,
System separations
N-2, ….N-n
balancing between resource adequacy, reliability, economics, environmental constraints, State Data Operating Simulations
contingencies
and using DG
Contingencies Grid
and other public purpose objectives to optimize transmission and distribution resources to Contingencies Conventional techniques Fix violations
meet the needs of the end users. Actual (capacitor switching, and find optimized
Contingency load shedding, physical location of
• Approximately 24 outages per year in the United States advanced reactive
Decision controlled separation
with curtailments in 100 to 1,000 MW range Automatic Emergency support etc
Support Operator Controls Control
• About 5 outages in 1000 to 10,000 MW range Intervention Create islands RAS and restoration
• One outage every 4 years at 10,000+ MW. Pre-Programmed Actions technique
• This is a global issue RULE
No Operator Involvement
• Days needed to restore power after Hurricane Katrina Human in the Loop
BASE

Human Factor Research Work

Research Activities Related to Semantic Web For ontology development

To do knowledge extraction and to

Application Actionable
Summary
provide decision support to operators Substation Data
Data Domain Information
Flow
Intelligence Researchers are
Flow
a software tool based on ontology working on developing • The electric power grid is part of this country's critical infrastructure.
will be developed using web sensors, Load Center
Data
Application
Information
Flow an improved • Grid needs to be enhanced to incorporate the latest advances in sensing,
Data Domain
OWL, and sensorML. Sensor web visualization strategy communication, services, and visualization technologies.
Middleware

Flow
Middleware

Knowledge
enablement provides an extensive Flow to assist with • To protect this asset, we need to develop ontology based information services for
Generator Information
Application
monitoring and sensing system that Status
Data Domain
Flow
situational awareness
Contingency
Contingency
1
2
Data
Data
Data
Data
Data
Data
power system monitoring and control. An architecture for using the semantic web
Flow

contributes timely, comprehensive,

Contingency 3 Data Data Data
and a sensor web enablement has been proposed here for wide area monitoring and
SCADA Resource discovery, Distributed Data
Resolve information Domain Specific knowledge
building and decision support Contingency 4 Data Data Data
metadata access, Analysis Centers
heterogeneity
(semantic,syntactic, through ontological
Contingency
Contingency
5
6
Data
Data
Data
Data
Data
Data power system monitoring, operation and control in general.
continuous, and multi-mode browse data pool (Control areas,
Research labs,
format,etc) Modeling
(OWL,DAML+OIL,etc)
for reliability and … Data Data Data
Structure Universities, etc)
observations for the power systems. Retrieval generation desks based
Reasoning
A rule base developed by detailed Action on CTA and current Acknowledgements:
power system analysis will be Data Information Knowledge Meaning visualization.
This research work is sponsored
included in the ontology to provide Reliability Desk
Generation Desk by DoHS/ORNL Funds: 63886
decision support. World Wide Web Semantic Web