Power Grid Protection through Rapid Response Control of FACTS Devices

Recently the use of Flexible AC Transmission System (FACTS) devices has been proposed for enhanced power grid protection and control. Unfortunately, due to their prohibitive costs, it is unlikely that more than a few FACTS devices will be installed on any one power grid. This work studies a particular type of FACTS device: the Unified Power Flow Controller (UPFC). This paper first demonstrates that a few well-placed UPFCs are capable of influencing a large portion of the power grid. Then it introduces partial power flow, a new approach for speeding up cooperative control of UPFCs. Partial power flow relies on recalculating the power flow on only selected sections of the grid. In this work, partial power flow was tested on an optimal power flow (OPF) algorithm for UPFC control, but is not specific to this algorithm. The results presented in this paper show that employing partial power flow leads to a more rapid response to disruptions of the power grid. This paper also outlines further applications of the partial power flow method