Assessment of Power Swings in Hydropower Plants Through High-Order Modeling and Eigenanalysis

POWER plants are subject to introduce disturbances in the power grid, resulting from interactions with the dynamical behavior of the energy source subsystem. In the case of hydropower plants when used to compensate for variations of power generation and consumption, instabilities or undesirable disturbances may arise. They may be caused by phenomena such as part load vortex rope pulsations in the draft tube of Francis turbines. This may affect the dynamical behavior of the power plant and lead to troublesome interactions with the grid. This paper presents a case study of an existing hydropower plant that illustrates the effects of pressure pulsations due to vortex rope precession on the draft tube of Francis turbines. It also showcases possible solutions to the mitigation of the effects of this disturbing hydraulic phenomenon over the operation of the generators and electrical system. The investigated system is a 1-GW hydropower plant (4 × 250 MW units). The assessment of the power swings is performed through modal analysis combined with frequency-domain and time-domain simulations, which are then compared with onsite measurements.

Assessment of Power Swings in Hydropower Plants through High-Order Modelling and Eigenanalysis

Pedro Camilo de Oliveira e Silva, Basile Kawkabani

Power plants are subject to introduce disturbances in the power grid, resulting from interactions with the dynamical behavior of the energy source subsystem. In the case of hydropower plants when used to compensate for variations of power generation and consumption, instabilities or undesirable disturbances may arise. They may be caused by phenomena such as part load vortex rope pulsations in the draft tube of Francis turbines. This may affect the dynamical behavior of the power plant and lead to troublesome interactions with the grid. This paper presents a case study of an existing hydropower plant that illustrates the effects of pressure pulsations due to vortex rope precession on the draft tube of Francis turbines. It also showcases possible solutions to the mitigation of the effects of this disturbing hydraulic phenomenon over the operation of the generators and electrical system. The investigated system is a 1 GW hydropower plant (4 x 250 MW units). The assessment of the power swings is performed through modal analysis combined with frequency-domain and time-domain simulations, which are then compared with on-site measurements.

IEEE2016

Providing ancillary service with commercial buildings: the Swiss perspective

Ali Ahmadi Khatir, Colin Neil Jones, Ioannis Lymperopoulos, Xuan Truong Nghiem, Faran Ahmed Qureshi

Ancillary services constitute the cornerstone of the power grid. They allow for an efficient system operation, provide resilience to uncertainties and establish safeguards against unprecedented events. Their importance is growing due to the rise of grid decentralisation and integration of intermittent, renewable power sources, which lead to more variability and uncertainty in the system. Today, the vast share of ancillary services is provided by large generating units. An ongoing effort by research and business entities focuses on using variation of loads connected to the power grid in order to increase significantly the provision of such services, hopefully at a reduced cost. We examine here, from an economic perspective, the use of commercial buildings as ancillary service providers based on real prices from the Swiss electricity market. We calculate the effect of retail electrical prices on the economic performance of a building and find that for the rates charged in the least expensive cantons a single building can reduce its overall energy costs, when participating in the ancillary services market. For the high end of prices this gradually becomes prohibitive but can be alleviated for a building that has a need for electricity during nighttime hours, as well as daytime. Finally, we show, the counter-intuitive result that providing ancillary services can increase the comfort levels of a building at a decreased cost.

2015

From human-intention recognition to compliant control using dynamical systems in physical human-robot interaction

Mahdi Khoramshahi

Human ability to coordinate one's actions with other individuals to perform a task together is fascinating. For example, we coordinate our action with others when we carry a heavy object or when we construct a piece of furniture. Capabilities such as (1) force/compliance adaptation, (2) intention recognition, and (3) action/motion prediction enables us to assist others and fulfill the task. For instance, by adapting the compliance, we not only reject undesirable perturbations that undermine the task but also incorporate others' motions into the interaction. Complying with partners' motions allows us to recognize their intention and consequently predict their actions. With the growth of factories involving humans and robots working side by side, designing controllers and algorithms with such capacities is a crucial step toward assistive robotics. The challenge, however, is to attain a unified control strategy with predictive/adaptive capacities at the task, motion, and force-level which ensures a stable and safe interaction. To this aim, this thesis proposes a state-dependent dynamical system-based approach for prediction and control in physical human-robot interactions. In the first part of this dissertation, we focus on the human capacity to predict their partners' motion. More specifically, we investigate mechanisms of spatio-temporal coordination between two partners. We employ a simple scenario called âthe mirror gameâ where two individuals (human, robot, or avatar) imitate each other's motions. Our empirical assessment reveal that the intention-based prediction of the leader's motions allows the follower to compensate for perception-action delays and to improve the tracking performance in terms of temporal coordination and confidence. In the second part of this dissertation, we propose an adaptive mechanism that enables the robot to recognize the intention of a human user. We utilize state-dependent dynamical systems for motion planning and impedance control to deliver safe and compliant human-robot interaction. We consider a series of tasks (possible human intentions) encoded by dynamical system. Applying a similarity metric between the real velocities (induced by the human) and desired velocities generated by the dynamical systems, the robot is thus able to recognize the human's intention and switch to the intended task. We provide a rigorous experimental and analytical evaluation of our method yielding an interaction behavior that is safe and intuitive for the human. Finally, we tackle the compliance adaptation capability. We propose an admittance controller that reacts only when human-intentional forces are detected. Intentional and accidental forces are distinguished by measuring the persistency of the external forces, through a computation of the autocorrelation/energy of the force patterns. The overall controller exhibits variable stiffness where high stiffness allows the robot to reject the external disturbances and execute the task autonomously whereas low stiffness enables the robot to comply with human intentional forces. We demonstrate that our control architecture is effective in delivering satisfactory tracking and compliant behavior through a series of robotic experimentations.

EPFL2019

From human-intention recognition to compliant control using dynamical systems in physical human-robot interaction

Mahdi Khoramshahi

EPFL2019