Wide Area Measurement Systems (WAMS) is a technology that relies on precision time signal from global positioning system (GPS) and high-speed communication network to track dynamic evolution in interconnected AC power network. The role of this technology is at the heart of Smart Grid. Following several serious power blackout incidents in 2003, policy makers in the European Union and the USA have highlighted the importance of emerging measurement-based technology towards achieving more stable operation of A.C. transmission grids.

The research undertaken by Professor Pal targeted developing advance signal processing tools to analyse, characterise and alert the system control any slowly developing electromechanical oscillations that at times in the past have led to large scale power blackouts. The research is primarily sponsored by the Engineering and Physical Research Council (EPSRC), UK in partnership with technology vendor company (ABB) and network operator (National Grid). Aalto University and FINGRID in Finland and STATNET in Norway have joined us subsequently.

The research deliverables comprised of:

Research team

Researchers

Research collaborators

Research sponsorship

Sponsors

Research grants

Research dissemination

Besides publications in journal and conferences, an International WAMS workshop was conducted by Dr Pal and Prof Thornhill.

Follow on Activity: A six university collaboration is estabilished between Imperial College, University of Southampton, University of Warwick, Tsinghua University, North-China Electric Power University, and Hohai University in North-China, in the area of protection and control of active power distribution network. Earlier another collaboration has developed. Aalto University in Finland and Fingrid, the Finnish grid transmission operator, have joined Imperial, National Grid and ABB to publish a study of the performance of the developed method using data from the Finnish part of the Scandinavian grid and also from simulation (where the damping was known). Further contacts include Statnett in Norway who operate the Norwegian part of the Scandinavian transmission grid. The expanded group made a successful bid for an FP7 project called REAL-SMART which was coordinated by Imperial College London (Thornhill and Pal). The project is a €1.1M FP7 Marie Curie project which started in September 2010. The partners are Aalto University, ABB, Fingrid, GE Research, National Grid, Imperial, Statnett and the Technical University of Graz. The new project concerns monitoring and management of high voltage transmission grids. The researchers took up academic positions in university and industry.

Selected publications

  1. J. Nsengiyaremye, B. C. Pal and M. M. Begovic, `` Low-Cost Communication-Assisted Line Protection for Multi-Inverter Based Microgrids'', IEEE Transactions on Power Delivery Early Access.
  2. J. Nsengiyaremye, B. C. Pal and M. M. Begovic, ``Microgrid Protection Using Low-Cost Communication Systems'', IEEE Transactions on Power Delivery, vol. 35, no. 4, pp. 2011-2020, Aug. 2020.
  3. E. Barocio, B.C. Pal, A.R. Messina, ``Modal Identification of Transient and Ambient Data Oscillations using Local Empirical Mode Decomposition and Teager-Kaiser Energy Operator,'' IEEE Modal Identification Task Force.
  4. E. Barocio, B.C. Pal, A.R. Messina, `` Real Time monitoring as enabler for smart transmission grids,'' IEEE General Meeting, Detroit, Michigan, USA, 2011. Panel session on smart grids in Europe.
  5. J. Thambirajah, N.F. Thornhill, B.C. Pal, `` A Multi­variate Approach Towards Inter-Area Oscillation Damping Estimation Under Ambient Conditions Via Independent Component Analysis And Random Decrement,'' IEEE Transactions on Power Systems, vol. 26, no. 1, pp 315-322, Feb. 2011.
  6. D.S. Laila, A.R. Messina and B.C. Pal, ``A refined Hilbert-Huang transform with applications to inter-area oscillation monitoring,'' IEEE Transactions on Power Systems, vol. 24, no. 2, pp. 610-620, May 2009.
  7. K. K. Anaparthi, B. Chaudhuri, N. F. Thornhill and B. C. Pal, ``Coherency identification in power systems through principal component analysis,'' IEEE Transactions on Power Systems, vol. 20, no. 3, pp. 1658-1660, Aug. 2005.
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