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WG C2.40, TSO – DSO Co-Operation Control Centre Tools Requirements

The rapid penetration of renewable generation at the distribution level has elevated the importance of high levels of coordination between TSO’s and DSO’s.  In addition, the steady increase of renewables as a percentage of overall generation has led to withdrawal of conventional synchronous plants and the need for alternative supplies of system services such as inertia and spinning reserve.  In this environment a high level of coordination between TSO’s, DSO’s, dispersed energy resources and aggregators is essential.  This is particularly important in Australia which has one of the highest levels of penetration of roof top solar generation in the world.

Recent key changes to the power system include:

  • Connection of a vast number of DERs.
  • Electrification of heat and transport.
  • More consumers producing their own electricity.
  • New technology that gives consumers more control over how they use electricity.
  • Advances in energy storage technology.
  • New market rules and grid codes worldwide.

Working Group C2.40, TSO – DSO Co-Operation Control Centre Tools Requirements, has recently produced Technical Brochure 845 which has explored how coordination can be improved and has specified a set of control centre tools and related IT needed for the TSO’s and DSO’s to manage and operate this newly evolved power system.   These tools are required to foster high levels of cooperation and should ideally be able to be used by both the TSO’s and the DSO’s.  The Australian Member on the Working Group was Matt Rigano.

Six tools have been identified:

Congestion Management

This is a Congestion Platform where TSO activations of flexibility can cause local congestion for DSOs. The DSO receives proposed flexibility activations from the Flexibility Service Providers (FSP) and runs power flow analysis to determine if congestion is predicted, based on the proposed activations. If so, it must apply an agreed set of rules to ensure that a reduced set of activations is presented back to the FSP. This can be automated where there are high volumes of distributed renewable generation. The tool also identifies network congestion issues in high wind scenarios and determines wind generator effectiveness in managing these issues.

Constraint Management

This provides a clearing platform for network constraints and is used to resolve conflicts between competing TSO and DSO requirements and utilise synergies associated with local, regional and global requirements.

Voltage Control

This provides optimal coordination of reactive power exchanges between the TSO and DSO, using the capabilities of the distribution system to support the voltage on the transmission system.

DER Management System

This is an application platform using technologies and operational concepts to aggregate, integrate and manage distributed energy resources (DER) and controllable loads in distribution and transmission systems to enable the provision of flexibility services.

Restoration

Here a restoration support tool for use by control room operators is proposed for situations where there is a high degree of Inverter Based Resources connected to the distribution network.  In these cases, traditional means of restoration may no longer be sufficient.

Combined Power Flow and Voltage Control

This tool is applied at points of interconnection for the optimal coordination of active and reactive power exchanges between TSO’s and DSO’s. The focus of this tool is to explore the capabilities of the distribution network to alleviate transmission network congestion and improve overall power system security.

To date, these tools have been demonstrated on a small scale.  A large-scale roll out requires further research and innovation.  In addition, a number of potential tools and outstanding issues require further investigation. 

These include: 

  • Frequency Control and System Balancing
  • Dynamic modelling
  • Impact of Under Frequency Load Shedding
  • Common training and standard operating procedures
  • Market and commercial considerations
  • Large scale integration in the command-and-control structure

The Technical Brochure is free on e-cigre to members and 140€ for non members.