Non-standard power grid frequency statistics in Asia, Australia, and Europe

TL;DR

This paper analyzes power-grid frequency data from Asia, Australia, and Europe, revealing non-standard statistical properties that help improve models and assessments of grid stability across diverse regions.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive analysis of frequency variations across multiple regions, introducing new statistical insights and evaluation tools for power-grid frequency modeling.

Findings

Revealed non-standard statistics in empirical and synthetic frequency data.

Constrained the space of possible stochastic frequency models.

Highlighted the importance of multi-region data analysis for generalizable models.

Abstract

The power-grid frequency reflects the balance between electricity supply and demand. Measuring the frequency and its variations allows monitoring of the power balance in the system and, thus, the grid stability. In addition, gaining insight into the characteristics of frequency variations and defining precise evaluation metrics for these variations enables accurate assessment of the performance of forecasts and synthetic models of the power-grid frequency. Previous work was limited to a few geographical regions and did not quantify the observed effects. In this contribution, we analyze and quantify the statistical and stochastic properties of self-recorded power-grid frequency data from various synchronous areas in Asia, Australia, and Europe at a resolution of one second. Revealing non-standard statistics of both empirical and synthetic frequency data, we effectively constrain the space of possible (stochastic) power-grid frequency models and share a range of analysis tools to benchmark any model or characterize empirical data. Furthermore, we emphasize the need to analyze data from a large range of synchronous areas to obtain generally applicable models.