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EFFECTS OF MEASUREMENT AND PARAMETER UNCERTAINTIES ON THE POWER TRANSFER DISTRIBUTION FACTORS

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 December 2005

Cansin Y. Evrenosoglu
Affiliation:
Electrical Engineering Department, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX 77843, E-mail: yaman@ee.tamu.edu
Ali Abur
Affiliation:
Electrical Engineering Department, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX 77843, E-mail: abur@ee.tamu.edu
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Abstract

This paper investigates the effects of measurement and parameter errors on the calculation of power transfer distribution factors (PTDFs). Calculation of PTDFs depends mainly on two factors: the operating conditions and the network topology. Both of these factors change in real time and are monitored through the use of a state estimator. The role of the state estimator in providing not only the state information but also the real-time network model is shown to influence power market operations via PTDF-based decisions such as congestion management and pricing. The IEEE 14 bus test system is used for the illustration of these influences.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
© 2006 Cambridge University Press

1. INTRODUCTION

Power transfer distribution factors (PTDFs) are commonly used in calculations required for deciding on transmission loading relief procedures. Elements of the PTDF matrix represent the sensitivities of branch power flows to bus power injections.

These sensitivities can be used in various power system calculations such as those required for approval of new power transactions, congestion management, or finding the impact of power transactions on flowgates [2,6]. Any errors in PTDF calculations will directly translate into operator decisions that are incorrect and possibly harmful for the system security.

By definition, PTDF calculations are functions of the operating point at which they are evaluated. Those PTDFs that are evaluated at a flat start using the well-known decoupling assumptions of [8] are referred to as DC PTDFs. Using the full coupled model and evaluating the sensitivities at the current operating point will yield the AC PTDFs. Any time the network topology changes, the PTDFs will have to be updated. Moreover, changes in network parameters such as line impedances will also affect these sensitivities and, therefore, should be monitored and corrected whenever necessary.

The AC PTDFs, which yield more accurate sensitivities of flows to bus injections, can be obtained each time the state estimator is executed. The system model and current operating conditions will be supplied by the state estimator, which processes the system measurements and the output of the topology processor to obtain the best estimate of the system state. Hence, the uncertainties associated with the inputs to the estimator will also affect the quantities computed based on the state estimator's output, such as the AC PTDFs.

In this paper the effect of the measurement and parameter uncertainties on AC PTDF calculations is studied. In the formulation of the commonly used weighted least squares (WLS) state estimation method, the measurement errors are assumed to be distributed according to a Normal distribution with zero mean. The distribution of PTDFs can then be obtained based on the assumed distribution of the measurement errors. This can be done not only for Normally distributed measurement errors but also for outliers (bad data). It has been reported in the literature [3] that although the PTDFs remain relatively insensitive to changes in system loading, they are significantly affected by topology and network parameter changes. In this paper the specific case of the transmission line parameters is considered and the sensitivity of AC PTDFs to these parameters is also investigated. A transmission line parameter may be incorrect due to simple database errors or due to unmonitored changes resulting from environmental or loading conditions. Although most existing state estimators are not configured to estimate network parameters, this capability certainly exists, as shown in the literature [7]. It will be shown that unless this capability is properly exploited, PTDF calculations may contain serious errors when network topology or parameter errors exist.

The paper is organized such that the methodology is explained in Section 2, followed by Section 3, where the simulations on the IEEE 14 bus test system are presented. These simulations illustrate the effects of measurement, topology, and parameter errors on AC PTDFs. Section 4 contains the conclusions and final remarks.

2. METHODOLOGY

The PTDF matrix represents the sensitivities of power flows to bus injections, and its (i,j)-th element can be defined as

where x0 is the operating state of the system, PF,i is the power flow through branch i, and PB,j is the power injected at bus j. The partial derivatives can be evaluated at any operating point and the PTDF matrix can be compactly written as

where Jf is a [m × (2 × nk − 1)] gradient matrix of the real power flows with respect to states, J is the power flow Jacobian of order (2 × nk − 1), m is the number of the transmission lines, n is the number of the buses, and k is the number of the generation buses (slack and PV buses). If the operating state is assumed to be the flat-start condition and the decoupled Pθ submatrices are substituted for Jf and J, then (1) will yield the so-called DC PTDF matrix.

In this study the following measurement model will be assumed:

where z is the measurement vector, h(x) is the nonlinear state estimation function, and e is the measurement error that has a Normal distribution with zero mean and known (assumed) variance.

In order to study the effect of the measurement error variances on PTDFs, the following procedure is followed:

  1. Gaussian noise with zero mean and a prespecified standard deviation σ is introduced to the same set of measurements generated using a base case power flow. All measurements are assumed to have the same error distribution. K sample measurement sets are created.
  2. State estimation solutions are obtained for each of the K sampled measurement sets and the corresponding AC PTDF matrices are calculated using these solutions.
  3. Steps 1 and 2 are repeated for different choices of σ.

A similar procedure is followed for studying the effect of a single gross measurement error on the calculation of the AC PTDFs. In this case, Step 1 is repeated. Then, before performing the state estimation, the sign of one of the measurements is reversed in all of the K sample measurement sets. This introduces a persistent gross error in all of the samples, which are otherwise free of gross errors, only having Gaussian noise in the measurements. Step 2 is then carried out to obtain K samples of the AC PTDFs.

The final investigation is related to the topology and network parameter errors. Topology errors occur when a switching event is unreported and the topology processor fails to provide the correct network connectivity information to the state estimator. This leads to a mismatch between the actual system model and the model assumed by the state estimator, which subsequently yields a biased solution. Another type of error occurs when one or more of the network parameters are incorrectly entered into the real-time database. This sort of error can be due to many different reasons. For instance, in the case of transmission line parameters, they are known to vary as a result of changes in the ambient temperature, leading to line sag and overheating of the conductors. The amount of parameter variation may be quite significant; for example, considering the three-phase line with Pheasant-type conductors, line resistance will change from 0.0751 Ω/mile to 0.0890 Ω/mile due to a change in temperature from 25°C to 75°C [4]. Hence, the effects of such parameter errors on the calculation of AC PTDFs are expected to be significant. The following simulation study is carried out in order to quantify this significance.

Considering the same test system, the resistance and reactance of a line jk are assumed to be random variables with a Normal distribution. The mean values μ of their distributions are chosen as the base-case values, and for each parameter the corresponding σ is chosen as 0.3μ (i.e., 30% of its mean value). The following steps are performed to carry out the simulations:

  1. K samples of network parameters are generated by treating all line parameters deterministically except for the chosen line jk, whose parameters are allowed to vary according to a Normal distribution. K measurement sets are created from the power flow solutions corresponding to the K samples of network parameters. It is assumed that there is at least one incident measurement (terminal injections or line flows) to line jk among the measurements in order for the transmission line parameters to be observable [5].
  2. K sets of AC PTDF matrices are calculated corresponding to the state estimation solutions obtained for the measurement sets created in Step 1.

The following section contains the results of implementing the above-described test procedures using a small test system and its measurement configuration.

3. SIMULATIONS

Figure 1 shows the system diagram and the measurement configuration for the IEEE 14 bus test system, which is used for all simulations. Bus 1 is the slack bus and buses 2 and 3 are PV buses. Power Educational Toolbox (PET) [1] is used to verify the results obtained in a MATLAB environment. Measurement configuration consists of 17 flow measurements, 2 injection measurements, and 1 voltage magnitude measurement.

IEEE 14 bus test system measurement configuration.

The three issues that were discussed in the previous section will be investigated using simulations. The effects of measurement noise, bad data, and network parameter errors will be illustrated separately in the following subsections.

3.1. Effect of Measurement Noise

The sample size K is chosen as 100 and the three-step procedure outlined in Section 2 is carried out for this case. The measurement noise levels are varied by changing the standard deviation of the error distributions N(0,σ2) as follows:

The results are shown only for a chosen entry of the PTDF due to the space limitations; however, all other entries are observed to behave in a similar manner.

The PTDF matrix entry (12, 11) is observed for each distribution, where the 12th row of the matrix corresponds to the transmission line 6–12 and the 11th column corresponds to bus 12. The entry (12, 11) of the PTDF matrix when calculated by using error-free measurements is equal to −0.5802. As expected, the mean values of the PTDFs in Table 1 are all close to this value. However, the standard deviation of the PTDF entry (12, 11) increases linearly with the σ of measurement errors.

Effect of Measurement Error Variances on PTDF(12, 11)

3.2. Effect of Bad Data

The effect of a biased measurement or bad data on PTDFs is presented in this subsection. The flow measurement on line 6–11 in Figure 1 is assumed to be biased. The number of simulated samples is again chosen as 100 and measurements are generated by introducing errors from a Normal distribution with zero mean and 0.001 standard deviation. In each measurement set, the sign of the flow measurement 6–11 is reversed to simulate a gross error.

In this case, the entry (11, 10) of the AC PTDF is observed. Here, the 11th row corresponds to line 6–11. The PTDF matrix entry (11, 10) is calculated as −0.5423 by using error-free measurements. Table 2 shows the results of simulations. In this case, there is a bias in the distribution of the calculated PTDF(11, 10). Its value changes from −0.5423 to −0.5316 as a result of the gross error in one of the measurements. The effect of normal variation due to measurement noise in the remaining measurements remains the same as in Section 3.1. As the magnitude of the gross error increases, the AC PTDFs will become more biased. This observation highlights the importance of robust state estimators, which can properly detect, identify, and eliminate gross errors so that other application functions will not be affected.

Effect of Bad Data on PTDF(11, 10)

3.3. Effect of Parameter Error

In this subsection the effect of a change in transmission line parameter on PTDFs is studied. Similar to the previous cases, 100 measurement sets are created using the power flow solutions obtained by changing the impedance of transmission line 6–12 for each solution. The impedance value of 6–12 is sampled from a Normal distribution N(μ,σ2), where μ = Z0 and σ = 0.3Z0, Z0 being the base-case value of line 6–12.

Two different sets of state estimation solutions are obtained. The first set of solutions is computed using the modified impedance of line 6–12 for each solution. In this case it is assumed that the changes in the parameters of the line are somehow monitored by the state estimator and by the subsequent PTDF calculator. The second set of solutions is obtained using the base-case value Z0 for line 6–12 impedance. This case assumes that the changes in the line parameters go undetected and that the state estimator as well as the subsequent PTDF calculator will use the fixed base-case value for the line parameter even though its actual value will be varying for each solution. Table 3 gives the calculated values for the (12, 11)-th entry of the AC PTDF matrix for these two cases.

Effect of Parameter Change on PTDF(12, 11)

Note that when calculated using error-free measurements and the base-case value for the line parameter, the value of PTDF(12, 11) is −0.5802. When the changes in the line parameters are known and taken into account in state estimation and subsequent PTDF calculations, the PTDFs also change. For instance, in the case of PTDF(12, 11), the range of values it assumes is between −0.7976 and −0.4547.

As expected, the effects of network parameter errors on PTDFs are more significant than the effects of measurement errors. In Table 3, it can be observed that the standard deviation of PTDF(12, 11) is about 10% of its base-case value. Such errors may play a critical role in approving transactions. Consider the case where 1 MW of power transaction is planned from bus 1 to bus 12. The system operator will decide whether to allow this transaction, according to the PTDFs that are calculated based on the information supplied by the topology processor. The base case PTDF(11, 12) is −0.5802. However, assume that the parameters of line 6–12 change, subsequently changing PTDF(11, 12) also to −0.7976. This implies that 1 MW of power transaction from bus 1 to bus 12 will actually create a 0.7976 MW power flow increase on line 6–12 instead of the predicted 0.5802 MW using the base-case parameter values. In this case, if the thermal limit of the line happens to be 0.6, allowing this transaction may lead to thermal overloading of the line 6–12.

Unfortunately, parameter errors are not easily detected and identified by existing bad data processing methods. This can be demonstrated by a modified measurement configuration of the same system. Assume that the line flow measurement at 6–12 is removed and injection measurements at buses 6, 11, 12, and 13 are added. In this case, an error is introduced in the parameters of line 6–12. When state estimation is performed, the largest normalized residual analysis yields the results shown in Table 4. Discarding the measurements with largest normalized residuals and repeating the state estimation will result in the removal of injections at 12 and 6, as shown in Table 4. No more bad data are suspected after the third state estimation cycle. This results in a biased estimate for the state and, worse yet, it will allow the parameter error to go undetected. The subsequent calculations including those involving PTDFs will all be erroneous.

Largest Normalized Residuals

One possible approach is to incorporate proper parameter error detection and parameter estimation algorithms [7]. A suspect set of parameters can first be identified and their values can be estimated along with the states.

6. CONCLUSIONS

In this paper the effects of measurement and network parameter errors on AC PTDFs are discussed. It is shown that AC PTDFs are not affected significantly by Gaussian errors in the analog measurements, whereas gross errors in measurements may cause biased PTDFs. The effect of the bad data on AC PTDFs strongly depends on the severity of the bias of the measurement. It is also shown that the parameter errors have a significant impact on AC PTDFs. The error can be detected by largest normalized residual analysis, but it is more difficult to identify it as a parameter error. This topic requires further investigation. The function of the state estimator is certainly broadened in the deregulated operation of power systems, since it is now expected to provide not only the optimal state estimate but also the most probable network topology and network parameters.

References

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Figure 0

IEEE 14 bus test system measurement configuration.

Figure 1

Effect of Measurement Error Variances on PTDF(12, 11)

Figure 2

Effect of Bad Data on PTDF(11, 10)

Figure 3

Effect of Parameter Change on PTDF(12, 11)

Figure 4

Largest Normalized Residuals