Australia’s Power System Frequency: Current Situation, Industrial Challenges, Efforts, and Future Research Directions

Abstract

<p>This industry-oriented paper presents an overview and in-depth analysis of previous and current situations of power system frequency response and control in Australia. The evaluation of different services provided by different electricity market players under the supervision of the Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO) as an independent system operator provides lessons and an understanding of the current operation status with its real challenges and opportunities from frequency stability and security perspectives. Based on the evaluation of the current situation and future national planning, a number of research gaps and industrial technical issues are identified, and some perspectives on future research directions are presented to help move the power system transformation toward almost 100% renewable and more secure energy systems.</p>

An Affordable Sophisticated Frequency Control for Australian National Electricity Market System Considering Industry and Infrastructure Challenges

“…Frequency control is generally divided into three levels, i.e. primary, secondary, and tertiary control levels [5], [6]. The primary control is responsible for intercepting the frequency decline before triggering the under-frequency load shedding (UFLS) relays which is a local controller implemented using the governor-droop characteristic in traditional power systems.…”

“…Let us now define a new virtual dynamic observation system, given in (5), as a dynamic system effectively designed to accurately track the inaccessible/accessible variable states in the physical power system, given in (4), in a real-time manner.…”

“…The virtual dynamic system, the observer given in (5), is proposed and designed to be able to estimate internal dynamic states in each power region (control area) including the ACE in each control area without the need of further measurements. This means that the physical links, i.e.…”

“…NUMERICAL RESULTS AND DISCUSSIONS To validate the proposed affordable frequency control method for the NEM system, the same topology with exact connectivity between different power regions is considered. Figs 1 and 2 present the structure of the NEM system, which comprises 5 power regions, namely SA, VIC, NSW, QLD, and TAS [5]. It is worth mentioning that TAS is being operated based on a different FOS in comparison with the rest of regions, i.e.…”