Identifying Oscillations Injected by Inverter-Based Solar Energy Sources

TL;DR

This paper identifies a new high-frequency oscillation mode caused by inverter-based solar sources in power systems, using real-world data and advanced synchrophasor analysis tools to assess its spread and impact.

Contribution

It introduces a novel analysis of high-frequency oscillations injected by inverter-based solar sources using real-world synchrophasor data and customized analysis tools.

Findings

Detection of a new high-frequency oscillation mode

Visualization of the mode's propagation across the power system

Preliminary analysis using spectrograms and power spectral density

Abstract

Inverter-based solar energy sources are becoming widely integrated into modern power systems. However, their impacts on the system in the frequency domain are rarely investigated at a higher frequency range than conventional electromechanical oscillations. This paper presents evidence of the emergence of an oscillation mode injected by inverter-based solar energy sources in Dominion Energy's service territory. This new mode was recognized from the analysis of real-world ambient synchrophasor and point-of-wave data. The analysis was performed by developing customized synchrophasor analysis tools deployed on the PredictiveGrid^{TM} platform implemented at Dominion Energy. Herein, we describe and illustrate the preliminary analysis results acquired from spectrogram observations, power spectral density plots, and mode shape estimation. The emergence and propagation of this new mode in Dominion Energy's footprint is illustrated using a heatmap based on a proposed frequency component energy metric, which helps to assess this oscillation's spread and impact.