Modular Interactive Modeling for Control and Simulation of Electric Power Systems

Abstract

Power systems must ensure reliable service during normal operation and unexpected disturbances. They also should enable decarbonization goals by supporting utilization of new renewable energy resources that are being added to the system. Conventional control used in power plants and generators is becoming insufficient because previously true assumptions no longer hold with the widespread implementation of renewable energy sources. Future electric power systems will comprise of a more distributed grid of loads and Distributed Energy Resources (DERs), all contributing to electricity service goals. Novel modeling and control for their provable performance are actively being pursued. This thesis builds on the idea of novel modeling and controlling future electric power systems using a multi-level modular approach. Particular emphasis is on general simulation tools for assessing dependence of these new architectures on control design. A MATLAB-based Centralized Automated Modeling of Power Systems (CAMPS) software models the primary dynamics of components in a modular way and develops a centralized model of the interconnected system. In this thesis further extensions to CAMPS improve plotting of state variables and their expressions, enable conversion from the dq (direct quadrature) reference frame to the abc-reference frame, and allow substitution of different controllers into an open loop model.

A recently introduced modeling approach, which maps voltage and current variables into the energy space and interactively exchanges energy space variables called interaction variables between components, is used as the starting model for new simulations. One energy space-based controller is simulated using Simulink to test the controller’s performance when using a switching model instead of an average model. A new software tool, Plug-And-Play Automated Modeling of Power Systems (PAMPS) based on this recent theoretical work implements distributed algorithms in MATLAB. One example applies PAMPS to a RL (resistive and inductive) circuit controlled by a voltage source and connected to a constant power load. Future work can use PAMPS to model additional electrical components including synchronous machines and solar inverters. Since PAMPS exchanges information within the energy space, it can also be applied in future work to model the interactions between multi-energy sources such as mechanical and thermal energy conversion components.