Dynamic Wide Area Situational Awareness: Propelling Future Decentralized, Decarbonized, Digitized, and Democratized Electricity Grids

The millions of consumer-owned distributed energy resources (DERs) forecast for the grid by 2050 will trigger a major system change away from centralized monopolistic utilities to decentralized community projects exploiting innovative business models. Such a disruptive change, needed to switch to a carbon-neutral economy, requires rethinking both the economics and dynamics of power systems, knowing that the electric power sector is going digital. DER-driven uncertainties will impose costly operational margins and preventive measures based on solving very complex optimization problems. Keeping human operators in the loop to supervise actions can limit reaction time severely by making it difficult to respond in a timely manner when multiple control systems are required to stabilize the grid. The operator will hence need to be assisted by an artificial intelligence system trained at learning “good” decisions by imitating operators and assessing the associated operational risk. Hierarchical monitoring and control systems working in tandem with decentralized markets and resources will allow the true secure limits of decentralized, decarbonized, digitized, and democratized (4D) grids to be identified. This will be done with preventive/corrective actions executed in seconds while balancing grid cost versus safety, reliability, and stability.