Decentralized voltage stability monitoring and control in the smart grid using distributed computing architecture

To manage the smart electric grid of the future, fundamental changes are required in the system operational paradigm. Availability of high-resolution data at faster speed and advanced computational advancements provide opportunities to bring this fundamental change. Monitoring and control algorithms need to be evolved to match the transition of centralized generation to distributed generation. Intermittency of renewable generation and push towards real time control requires faster control actions, which is possible with decentralized power grid applications. With integration of distributed energy resources (DERs), the stability assessment application need to handle a large number of data points in real time. This requires massive computing resources, and requirements will increase for possible real time control action. Decentralized applications need to be coordinated and manged with existing centralized applications. This paper addresses the development of a fault-tolerant distributed computing architecture (DCBlocks) for implementing a decentralized voltage stability monitoring and control application. Results for IEEE 30 bus system have been provided to validate the developed architecture. Distributed computing algorithms are implemented using open source platform Akka Java and DeterLab test bed.