ABB Review Special Report - ABB - ABB Group

Developments in the world’s power markets are compelling utilitiesto place greater emphasis on asset utilization in order to operatemore profitably. But there is an equal need, as the recent massiveblackouts in North America and Europe showed, to have safeguardsin place that ensure total reliability for the transmission networks.Increasing attention is therefore being given to the monitoring ofpower system dynamics. This requires information of higher accuracyand with update rates faster than those normally provided by traditionalSCADA systems. In addition, it has to be synchronized over awider geographical area than traditional protection systems allow.With the introduction of phasor measurement units and recent advancesin communication and computing it has become technicallyfeasible to take a wide area approach to monitoring power systemstability on-line. Inform IT Wide Area Monitoring PSG 850 was developedas a state-of-the-art platform for just such an approach.IT-based, it offers solutions designed to optimize asset utilizationas well as to prevent entire power networks from collapsing.The world has come to depend onelectricity so much that huge efforts– and investments – have to be made toensure that it flows uninterruptedly.Apart from having to find the capital forthis, the electric utilities are faced withanother problem: market pressures areforcing them to maximize their profitability.Together, these factors providea strong incentive for utilities to installtechnology that combines functionalityfor optimizing asset utilization and coststructures with that required to preventpower system outages. This is preciselywhat Inform IT Wide Area MonitoringPSG 850 – one of a family of PSG modules/packagesthat also include widearea protection and control (PSG 870),wide area measurement (PSG 830) andwide area connectivity (PSG 810) (seefigure on page 34) – was developed for.Inherent benefits of the PSG 850 solutioninclude:Transmission capacity enhancement,achieved by on-line monitoring of thesystem safety or stability limits.Power system reinforcement (investmentplanning), based on feedbackobtained during analysis of systemdynamics.Introduction of a coordinated approachto stabilizing actions in casesof severe network disturbance.Triggering of additional functions,such as var compensation.Better understanding of a system’sdynamic behavior.Installation of an early warning systemdesigned to prevent potentialblackouts.Data utilization in wide area monitoringMonitoring of entire power systems withPSG 850 is based on dynamic phasormeasurement – increasingly being seenas the ultimate in data acquisition technology.Phasor measurement units(PMUs), located in critical areas of a network,allow fast measuring of the voltageand current phasors (ie, their magnitudeand phase angles) and optimizeprocess control on the basis of a dynamic,Special ReportABB Review33