Search

Energy forecasting is an essential task in power system operations. Operators usually issue forecasts and leverage them to schedule energy dispatch ahead of time. However, forecast models are typically developed in a way that overlooks the operational value of the forecasts. To bridge the gap, we design a value-oriented point forecasting approach for sequential energy dispatch problems with renewable energy sources. At the training phase, we align the loss function with the overall operation cost function, thereby achieving reduced operation costs. The forecast model parameter estimation is formulated as a bilevel program. Under mild assumptions, we convert the upper-level objective into an equivalent form using the dual solutions obtained from the lower-level operation problems. Additionally, a novel iterative solution strategy is proposed for the newly formulated bilevel program. Under such an iterative scheme, we show that the upper-level objective is locally linear regarding the forecast model output, and can act as the loss function. Numerical experiments demonstrate that, compared to commonly used statistical quality-oriented point forecasting methods, forecasts obtained by the proposed approach result in lower operation costs. Meanwhile, the proposed approach is more computationally efficient than traditional two-stage stochastic programs., Comment: submitted to IEEE Transactions on Smart Grid

Hydrogen, an essential resource in the decarbonized economy, is commonly produced as a by-product of chemical plants. To promote the use of by-product hydrogen, this paper proposes a supply chain model among chemical plants, hydrogen-storage salt caverns, and end users, considering time-of-use (TOU) hydrogen price, coalition strategies of suppliers, and road transportation of liquefied and compressed hydrogen. The transport route planning problem among multiple chemical plants is modeled through a cooperative game, while the hydrogen market among the salt cavern and chemical plants is modeled through a Stackelberg game. The equilibrium of the supply chain model gives the transportation and trading strategies of individual stakeholders. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed method can provide useful insights on by-product hydrogen market design and analysis.

Given the increased percentage of wind power in power systems, chance-constrained optimal power flow (CC-OPF) calculation, as a means to take wind power uncertainty into account with a guaranteed security level, is being promoted. Compared to the local CC-OPF within a regional grid, the global CC-OPF of a multi-regional interconnected grid is able to coordinate across different regions and therefore improve the economic efficiency when integrating high percentage of wind power generation. In this global problem, however, multiple regional independent system operators (ISOs) participate in the decision-making process, raising the need for distributed but coordinated approaches. Most notably, due to regulation restrictions, commercial interest, and data security, regional ISOs may refuse to share confidential information with others, including generation cost, load data, system topologies, and line parameters. But this information is needed to build and solve the global CC-OPF spanning multiple areas. To tackle these issues, this paper proposes a distributed CC-OPF method with confidentiality preservation, which enables regional ISOs to determine the optimal dispatchable generations within their regions without disclosing confidential data. This method does not require parameter tunings and will not suffer from convergence challenges. Results from IEEE test cases show that this method is highly accurate.

Probabilistic load flow (PLF) calculation, as a fundamental tool to analyze transmission system behavior, has been studied for decades. Despite a variety of available methods, existing PLF approaches rarely take system control into account. However, system control, as an automatic buffer between the fluctuations in random variables and the variations in system states, has a significant impact on the final PLF result. To consider control actions' influence, this paper proposes the first analytical PLF method for the transmission grid that takes into account primary and secondary frequency controls. This method is based on a high-precision linear power flow model, whose precision is even further improved in this paper by an original correction approach. This paper also proves that if the joint probability distribution (JPD) of random variables is expressed by a Gaussian mixture model (GMM), then the JPD of system states (e.g., nodal voltages) is an infinite GMM. By leveraging this proposition, the proposed method can generate the joint PLF of the whole system, is applicable to random variables obeying any distributions, and is capable of capturing their correlation. The high accuracy and satisfactory efficiency of this method are verified on test cases scaling from 14 to 1354 buses.

The 2050 carbon-neutral vision spawns a novel energy structure revolution, and the construction of the future energy structure is based on equipment innovation. Insulating material, as the core of electrical power equipment and electrified transportation asset, faces unprecedented challenges and opportunities. The goal of carbon neutral and the urgent need for innovation in electric power equipment and electrification assets are first discussed. The engineering challenges constrained by the insulation system in future electric power equipment/devices and electrified transportation assets are investigated. Insulating materials, including intelligent insulating material, high thermal conductivity insulating material, high energy storage density insulating material, extreme environment resistant insulating material, and environmental-friendly insulating material, are categorised with their scientific issues, opportunities and challenges under the goal of carbon neutrality being discussed. In the context of carbon neutrality, not only improves the understanding of the insulation problems from a macro level, that is, electrical power equipment and electrified transportation asset, but also offers opportunities, remaining issues and challenges from the insulating material level. It is hoped that this paper envisions the challenges regarding design and reliability of insulations in electrical equipment and electric vehicles in the context of policies towards carbon neutrality rules. The authors also hope that this paper can be helpful in future development and research of novel insulating materials, which promote the realisation of the carbon-neutral vision.

With the proliferation of distributed generators and energy storage systems, traditional passive consumers in power systems have been gradually evolving into the so-called “prosumers”, i.e., proactive consumers, which can both produce and consume power. To encourage energy exchange among prosumers, energy sharing is increasingly adopted, which is usually formulated as a generalized Nash game (GNG). In this paper, a distributed approach is proposed to seek the Generalized Nash equilibrium (GNE) of the energy sharing game. To this end, we first prove the strong monotonicity of the game. Then, the GNG is converted into an equivalent optimization problem. An algorithm based on Nesterov’s methods is thereby devised to solve the equivalent problem and consequently find the GNE in a distributed manner. The convergence of the proposed algorithm is proved rigorously based on the nonexpansive operator theory. The performance of the algorithm is validated by experiments with three prosumers, and the scalability is tested by simulations using 1888 prosumers.

Faults in photovoltaic (PV) systems can seriously affect the efficiency, energy yield as well as the security of the entire PV plant, if not detected and corrected quickly. Therefore, fault diagnosis of PV arrays is indispensable for improving the reliability, efficiency, productivity and safety of PV power stations. Instead of conventional thresholding methods and artificial intelligent (AI) machine learning approaches, an innovative Gaussian Mixture Model (GMM) based fault detection approach is proposed in this work. This approach combines the superiority of GMM in modeling stochastic power outputs of PV modules and the flexibility and simplicity of Sandia PV Array Performance Model (SPAM) to accurately detect under-performing modules. Firstly, GMM is proposed to represent the probabilistic distribution functions (PDF) of different PV modules' power outputs, and the parameter sets of which are obtained by Expectation Maximization algorithm. Secondly, a simplified explicit expression for output power of PV modules, which highlights the influences of tilt and azimuth angles, is deduced based on the SPAM. Then, an orientation independent vector C is developed to eliminate the probability distribution differences of power outputs caused by varying azimuth angles and tilt angles. Jensen-Shannon (JS) divergence, which captures the differences between probability density of C of each PV module, are generated and used as fault indicators. Simulation data acquired from the original SPAM are used to assess the performance of the proposed approach. Results show that the proposed approach successfully detects faults in PV systems. This work is especially suitable for the PV modules that have different installation parameters such as azimuth angles and tilt angles, and it does not require the use of irradiance or temperature sensors.

Dual decomposition is widely utilized in distributed optimization of multi-agent systems. In practice, the dual decomposition algorithm is desired to admit an asynchronous implementation due to imperfect communication, such as time delay and packet drop. In addition, computational errors also exist when individual agents solve their own subproblems. In this paper, we analyze the convergence of the dual decomposition algorithm in distributed optimization when both the asynchrony in communication and the inexactness in solving subproblems exist. We find that the interaction between asynchrony and inexactness slows down the convergence rate from $\mathcal{O} ( 1 / k )$ to $\mathcal{O} ( 1 / \sqrt{k} )$. Specifically, with a constant step size, the value of objective function converges to a neighborhood of the optimal value, and the solution converges to a neighborhood of the exact optimal solution. Moreover, the violation of the constraints diminishes in $\mathcal{O} ( 1 / \sqrt{k} )$. Our result generalizes and unifies the existing ones that only consider either asynchrony or inexactness. Finally, numerical simulations validate the theoretical results.

Probabilistic load flow (PLF) allows to evaluate uncertainties introduced by renewable energy sources on system operation. Ideally, the PLF calculation is implemented for an entire grid requiring all the parameters of the transmission lines and node load/generation to be available. However, in a multi-regional interconnected grid, the independent system operators (ISOs) across regions may not share the parameters of their respective areas with other ISOs. Consequently, the challenge is how to identify the functional relationship between the flows in the regional grid and the uncertain power injections of renewable generation sources across regions without full information about the entire grid. To overcome this challenge, we first propose a privacy-preserving distributed accelerated projection-based consensus algorithm for each ISO to calculate the corresponding coefficient matrix of the desired functional relationship. Then, we leverage a privacy-preserving accelerated average consensus algorithm to allow each ISO to obtain the corresponding constant vector of the same relationship. Using the two algorithms, we finally derive a privacy-preserving distributed PLF method for each ISO to analytically obtain its regional joint PLF in a fully distributed manner without revealing its parameters to other ISOs. The correctness, effectiveness, and efficiency of the proposed method are verified through a case study on the IEEE 118-bus system.

Electrical load profiling supports retailers and distribution network operators in having a better understanding of the consumption behavior of consumers. However, traditional clustering methods for load profiling are centralized and require access to all the smart meter data, thus causing privacy issues for consumers and retailers. To tackle this issue, we propose a privacy-preserving distributed clustering framework for load profiling by developing a privacy-preserving accelerated average consensus (PP-AAC) algorithm with proven convergence. Using the proposed framework, we modify several commonly used clustering methods, including k-means, fuzzy C-means, and Gaussian mixture model, to provide privacy-preserving distributed clustering methods. In this way, load profiling can be performed only by local calculations and information sharing between neighboring data owners without sacrificing privacy. Meanwhile, compared to traditional centralized clustering methods, the computational time consumed by each data owner is significantly reduced. The privacy and complexity of the proposed privacy-preserving distributed clustering framework are analyzed. The correctness, efficiency, effectiveness, and privacy-preserving feature of the proposed framework and the proposed PP-AAC algorithm are verified using a real-world Irish residential dataset.

In chance-constrained OPF models, joint chance constraints (JCCs) offer a stronger guarantee on security compared to single chance constraints (SCCs). Using Boole's inequality or its improved versions to decompose JCCs into SCCs is popular, yet the conservativeness introduced is still significant. In this letter, a non-parametric iterative framework is proposed to achieve the decomposition of JCCs with negligible conservativeness. An adaptive risk allocation strategy is also proposed and embedded in the framework. Results on an IEEE test case show that the conservativeness using the framework is nearly eliminated, thereby reducing the generation cost considerably.

With the proliferation of distributed generators and energy storage systems, traditional passive consumers in power systems have been gradually evolving into the so-called "prosumers", i.e., proactive consumers, which can both produce and consume power. To encourage energy exchange among prosumers, energy sharing is increasingly adopted, which is usually formulated as a generalized Nash game (GNG). In this paper, a distributed approach is proposed to seek the Generalized Nash equilibrium (GNE) of the energy sharing game. To this end, we convert the GNG into an equivalent optimization problem. A Krasnosel'ski{\v{i}}-Mann iteration type algorithm is thereby devised to solve the problem and consequently find the GNE in a distributed manner. The convergence of the proposed algorithm is proved rigorously based on the nonexpansive operator theory. The performance of the algorithm is validated by experiments with three prosumers, and the scalability is tested by simulations using 123 prosumers.

Due to the uncertainty of distributed wind generations (DWGs), a better understanding of the probability distributions (PD) of their wind power forecast errors (WPFEs) can help market participants (MPs) who own DWGs perform better during trading. Under the premise of an accurate PD model, considering the correlation among DWGs and absorbing the new information carried by the latest data are two ways to maintain an accurate PD. These two ways both require the historical and latest wind power and forecast data of all DWGs. Each MP, however, only has access to the data of its own DWGs and may refuse to share these data with MPs belonging to other stakeholders. Besides, because of the endless generation of new data, the PD updating burden increases sharply. Therefore, we use the distributed strategy to deal with the data collection problem. In addition, we further apply the incremental learning strategy to reduce the updating burden. Finally, we propose a distributed incremental update scheme to make each MP continually acquire the latest conditional PD of its DWGs' WPFE. Specifically, we first use the Gaussian-mixture-model-based (GMM-based) joint PD to characterize the correlation among DWGs. Then, we propose a distributed modified incremental GMM algorithm to enable MPs to update the parameters of the joint PD in a distributed and incremental manner. After that, we further propose a distributed derivation algorithm to make MPs derive their conditional PD of WPFE from the joint one in a distributed way. Combining the two original algorithms, we finally achieve the complete distributed incremental update scheme, by which each MP can continually obtain its latest conditional PD of its DWGs' WPFE via neighborhood communication and local calculation with its own data. The effectiveness, correctness, and efficiency of the proposed scheme are verified using the dataset from the NREL.

Adopting Secure scalar product and Secure sum techniques, we propose a privacy-preserving method to build the joint and conditional probability distribution functions of multiple wind farms' output considering the temporal-spatial correlation. The proposed method can protect the raw data of wind farms (WFs) from disclosure, and are mathematically equivalent to the centralized method which needs to gather the raw data of all WFs.

Building the conditional probability distribution of wind power forecast errors benefits both wind farms (WFs) and independent system operators (ISOs). Establishing the joint probability distribution of wind power and the corresponding forecast data of spatially correlated WFs is the foundation for deriving the conditional probability distribution. Traditional parameter estimation methods for probability distributions require the collection of historical data of all WFs. However, in the context of multi-regional interconnected grids, neither regional ISOs nor WFs can collect the raw data of WFs in other regions due to privacy or competition considerations. Therefore, based on the Gaussian mixture model, this paper first proposes a privacy-preserving distributed expectation-maximization algorithm to estimate the parameters of the joint probability distribution. This algorithm consists of two original methods: (1) a privacy-preserving distributed summation algorithm and (2) a privacy-preserving distributed inner product algorithm. Then, we derive each WF's conditional probability distribution of forecast error from the joint one. By the proposed algorithms, WFs only need local calculations and privacy-preserving neighboring communications to achieve the whole parameter estimation. These algorithms are verified using the wind integration data set published by the NREL.