By Ric Austria, Francis Luces, Dr. Moises Gutierrez

(This topic was presented at the Conference of Electric Power Supply Industry, CEPSI held in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia on September 18-20, 2018. For the full presentation, please see this link.)

One of the tasks transmission planners, analysts, and system operation engineers to evaluate stability and resiliency of electric power system is to perform computer simulation of dynamic models and representation of power system components. The computer simulation may be part of an overall transmission planning process (5-10 years), evaluation of new generator interconnections, and assessment of system performance. Typically, the study interest for transient and voltage stability simulations falls on the range of 0.1-10 Hz where the said range of phenomena is sufficient to model and evaluate the dynamic response of power system components. With the influx of renewable energy sources on electric power system, the way traditional stability studies are performed would be affected physically (in terms of assessing the performance of the power system with renewables) and mathematically (in terms of algorithms and dynamic models being implemented).

Introduction                                                               

For developers of power plants, one of the important factors to consider is where and how to interconnect a plant to an existing transmission network in order to reliably deliver its full output. For conventional power plants (i.e. coal, oil, natural gas, etc.), the availability of fuel supply and environmental permitting are the main considerations for siting. In the case of solar photovoltaic (PV) projects, given the availability of land area for mounting solar panels and sufficient solar irradiance, the point of interconnection (POI) to the grid can be the determining factor for siting. An assessment of the thermal capacity at potential POIs provides an effective screen for potential sites. Using transmission capacity injection analysis, developers can swiftly determine the capability of the existing network to support additional power from a new source such as a PV project. With this type of analysis, solar power project developers can know fairly early in the development process if the selected site and POI can support the plant’s output.