Wide Area Frequency Visualization using Smart Client Technology

In order to significantly improve the situation awareness, the operators or operations engineers in the energy management systems and the regional and sub-regional security coordinators of large interconnected systems need to know in real-time the large system disturbance events such as generator outages, load outages and transmission outages over an entire interconnection. This paper describes a wide-area real-time frequency monitoring and visualization application using GPS synchronized frequency measurements including phasor measurement units (PMU) and frequency data recorders (FDR) and using advanced smart client technology. This wide area real-time frequency visualization application can also show the location, magnitude and the related event message on the frequency display in real-time by integration with the on-line event triggering and location of disturbance applications. This frequency visualization application can also be used for performing the post-disturbance analysis. The smart client technology used for the wide area real time frequency monitoring and visualization application significantly improves the performance by fully utilizing the local computer resources, the Internet and the Web services. The system architecture, the technical approaches and the solution algorithms used in this frequency visualization application are described in detail in this paper. The wide area frequency contours for the real-time monitoring and event replay functions provide interconnection frequency overview. The location, magnitude and the related event message shown on the display immediately after the event occurs will allow the users to know what is happening in the interconnected power system and to take appropriate control actions if necessary. This application has been tested using the wide area real-time frequency data sets related large generator outage events in the Eastern Interconnection. The test results are presented in this paper.