Optimal monitoring and visualization of steady state power system operation

Power system operation requires accurate monitoring of electrical quantities and a reliable database of the power system. As the power system operation becomes more competitive, the secure operation becomes highly important and the role of state estimation becomes more critical. Recently, due to the development of new technology in high power electronics, new control and monitoring devices are becoming more popular in power systems. It is therefore necessary to investigate their models and integrate them into the existing state estimation applications. This dissertation is dedicated to exploiting the newly appeared controlling and monitoring devices, such as Flexible AC Transmission System (FACTS) devices and (Phasor Measurement Units) PMUs, and developing new algorithms to include them into power system analysis applications. Another goal is to develop a 3D visualization tool to help power system operators gain an in-depth image of the system operation state and to identify limit violations in a quick and intuitive manner. An algorithm of state estimation of a power system with embedded FACTS devices is developed first. This estimator can be used to estimate the system state quantities and Unified Power Flow Controller (UPFC) controller parameters. Furthermore, it can also to be used to determine the required controller setting to maintain a desired power flow through a given line. In the second part of this dissertation, two methods to determine the optimal locations of PMUs are derived. One is numerical and the other one is topological. The numerical method is more effective when there are very few existing measurements while the topology-based method is more applicable for a system, which has lots of measurements forming several observable islands. To guard against unexpected failures of PMUs, the numerical method is extended to account for single PMU loss. In the last part of this dissertation, a 3D graphic user interface for power system analysis is developed. It supports two basic application functions, power flow analysis and state estimation. Different visualization techniques are used to represent different kinds of system information.