Taming Instabilities in Power Grid Networks by Decentralized Control

TL;DR

This paper investigates how decentralized control strategies can improve the stability of power grid networks with high renewable energy integration, emphasizing the role of network topology and control parameters.

Contribution

It provides a stability analysis of power grid motifs under decentralized control, highlighting conditions that favor decentralized energy production and the impact of network topology.

Findings

Averaging frequency measurements over large intervals improves stability.

Decentralized control supports both centralized and decentralized energy sources.

Cycle-like systems benefit more from DSGC with lower line capacities and averaging times.

Abstract

Renewables will soon dominate energy production in our electric power system. And yet, how to integrate renewable energy into the grid and the market is still a subject of major debate. Decentral Smart Grid Control (DSGC) was recently proposed as a robust and decentralized approach to balance supply and demand and to guarantee a grid operation that is both economically and dynamically feasible. Here, we analyze the impact of network topology by assessing the stability of essential network motifs using both linear stability analysis and basin volume for delay systems. Our results indicate that if frequency measurements are averaged over sufficiently large time intervals, DSGC enhances the stability of extended power grid systems. We further investigate whether DSGC supports centralized and/or decentralized power production and find it to be applicable to both. However, our results on cycle-like systems suggest that DSGC favors systems with decentralized production. Here, lower line capacities and lower averaging times are required compared to those with centralized production.