Impact of High Penetration of Inverter-based Generation on Electromechanical Wave Propagation in Power Grids

TL;DR

This paper investigates how increasing inverter-based generation, especially photovoltaic systems, affects the speed of electromechanical wave propagation in power grids, using real measurement data and modeling.

Contribution

It provides the first analysis linking high inverter-based generation penetration to changes in electromechanical wave speeds in large power systems.

Findings

Higher inverter-based generation levels increase wave propagation speed.

Measurement data confirms a correlation between PV penetration and wave speed.

Modeling shows inverter integration influences grid stability and protection.

Abstract

A power system electromechanical wave propagates from the disturbance location to the rest of system, influencing various types of protections. In addition, since more power-electronics-interfaced generation and energy storage devices are being integrated into power systems, electromechanical wave propagation speeds in the future power systems are likely to change accordingly. In this paper, GPS-synchronized measurement data from a wide-area synchrophasor measurement system FNET/GridEye are used to analyze the characteristics of electromechanical wave propagation in the U.S. Eastern Interconnection (EI) system. Afterwards, high levels of photovoltaic (PV) penetration are modeled in the EI to investigate the influences of a typical power-electronics--interfaced resource on the electromechanical wave propagation speed. The result shows a direct correlation between the local penetration level of inverter-based generation and the electromechanical wave propagation speed.