Real-Time Monitoring Applications for the Power Grid under Geomagnetic Disturbances

Prior research on the impact of geomagnetic disturbances (GMD) on the electric grid has mainly focused on improving GMD modeling for off-line analyses. Given the recent industry emphasis on monitoring the earth's magnetic field and geomagnetically induced currents (GIC), this paper describes a real-time GMD monitoring system. The real-time magnetic field measurements come from a network of six magnetometers installed in the US State of Texas. The paper focuses on the real-time GIC monitoring application implemented in a simulation environment, which could be extended to the real grid. The magnetic field measurements are coupled with ground conductivity models to calculate real-time electric fields, which are passed to a grid model to estimate and visualize GICs in real-time. Results are demonstrated on a synthetic but realistic and publicly available model of the Texas grid. The simulation environment is interactive with communication capabilities, making operational control and GMD mitigation possible in the near future.