Real-time dynamic security assessment: fast simulation and modeling applied to emergency outage security of the electric grid

A major drawback of current dynamic security assessment (DSA) software used to analyze the transient and dynamic responses to a large number of potential power system disturbances in a transient time frame is the long simulation time required to complete the calculations, making it impractical for real-time applications. This paper describes an attempt to dramatically reduce the time for DSA calculations so that DSA analyses can be converted from offline studies to routine, online use to aid grid operators in their real-time controller analyses. Using a new distributed computational architecture among other techniques, a modified version of DSA is developed which performs calculations fast enough for real-time applications to energy management systems (EMS) that operate today's grid systems.