Experimental Testing of a Real-Time Implementation of a PMU-Based Wide-Area Damping Control System

The modern power grid is being used under operating conditions of increasing stress, giving rise to grid stability issues. One of these stability issues is the phenomenon of inter-area oscillations. Simulations have demonstrated the advantages of Wide-area Measurement Signals (WAMS)-based Oscillation Damping Controls in achieving improved electromechanical mode damping compared to traditional, local signal-based Power System Stabilizers (PSS). This work takes an existing Phasor-based oscillation damping (POD) algorithm and uses it to implement a proof-of-concept, wide-area, real-time controller on National Instruments hardware. The developed prototype is tested in a real-time Hardware-in-the-loop setup (RT-HIL) using OPAL-RT's eMEGASIM real-time simulation platform and synchrophasor data from actual Phasor Measurement Units (PMUs). The prototype and experiments provide insight into the feasibility and real-world limitations of wide-area controls. Further, it is demonstrated how the proposed control architecture has applications independent of the controlled power system device. Challenges faced, the solutions implemented together with the present prototype's limitations are also discussed.