The key differences between a synchrophasor- based EMS and a traditional EMS are faster warnings and better anticipation. At present, operators typically initiate emergency decision- making only after a disturbance occurs. They need time to assimilate and analyse information about the disturbance from SCADA data and other sources, including conversations with neighbouring operators, and then need more time to decide on what to do. Experience shows that this lost time can allow a minor event to grow into a more serious incident or even a blackout. One goal of the US Department of Energy’s Smart Grid initiative is to understand how to make synchrophasor measurements trustworthy for fast early warnings and smarter prompt decision automation.
We are seeing one of the biggest changes in the industry since the introduction of affordable digital computers in the 70s, and for Jay Giri this is just the beginning. “Over the next five to 10 years, I see the promise of new technologies becoming a reality. The Holy Grail of Smart Grid is not just to monitor and visualise, but also to control the grid automatically – and this is going to happen only after this initial phase of building confidence with synchronized measurement technology.”
PhasorPoint
The Psymetrix PhasorPoint system is a state-of-the-art solution for wide-area real-time synchronised data collection, management, analysis, visualisation and reporting. “PhasorPoint was presented in Think Grid’s Winter 2011 issue, but since then PhasorPoint 6.0 has been released, offering 2 new applications: system disturbance monitoring for detecting disturbances, identifying locations and characterising their impact; and system condition monitoring for wide-area visualisation of system stresses through deviations in voltage magnitude, voltage angle, and frequency,” explains Dr Jos Trehern, CEO of Alstom’s Psymetrix unit. Operators can use PhasorPoint to help optimise controller settings (to avoid “disagreements” between controllers, for example), to access data for event analysis, and to improve grid reliability. Customisable tools allow the user to define views, calculations and event management. Historical information may be accessed through an optimised SQL-compliant interface. Scalability has been further improved thanks to benchmarking with over 1,000 PMUs.