Figure 2.
Stability boundary.
a. Visualisation of the stable boundary. The stability boundary (blue surface) and (pink surface) together enclose the stability domain. The boundary equation is (see Methods for details: Derivation of the boundary equations). For visualisation purposes, the radian system is used for in the figure.
b and c are the results of the 12BUS three-phase short circuit to ground simulation, respectively. The system is stable at , unstable at , and unstable in .
d. Boundary stability results for the 12BUS three-phase short circuit to ground, where is the duration of the fault. The positions of all operating points at and are indicated by cyan and magenta dots, respectively. The plane perpendicular to is not shown. At , all the operating points are clustered together. However, , the operating points are far away from the other points and outside the boundary.
Eq.1 is the analytical equation for the synchronous stability boundary. Specifically, when , the set where is the isolated stability domain. There has been previous research on the isolated domain11. Since it is very difficult to always maintain after a disturbance of the system, this situation is not discussed in this paper.
As one of the concepts closely related to stability, intentional isolation is an effective way of avoiding widespread blackouts following instability27. Identifying coherent generators is a prerequisite for building intentional islands28. Information regarding the coherence meta-generator groups can be obtained directly from the graph. That is, the partial synchronization of multiple generators, such as chimeric states29–31, can also be identified with a stable boundary. m operating points outside the boundary indicate that the n meta-generators are sequentially divided into m+1 coherent groups.
Disturbed trajectory and parameters
To understand the behavior of the power system after a disturbance and to calculate the CCT and UEP, it is necessary to study the perturbation trajectories consisting of running points.
Figure 3.
Fitting results for perturbed trajectories of a 12BUS trajectory of disturbed operating points after a three-phase short circuit to ground fault. In the expressions, (i) denotes the ith meta-generator, and . The subscripts u and ω denote the coefficients of the meta-generators at and , respectively. is the starting fault duration at which self-organised behaviour occurs at the disturbed operating point. To make it easier to show the details, in the picture uses the angle system.().
Figure 3.
Fitting results for perturbed trajectories of a 12BUS trajectory of disturbed operating points after a three-phase short circuit to ground fault. In the expressions, (i) denotes the ith meta-generator, and . The subscripts u and ω denote the coefficients of the meta-generators at and , respectively. is the starting fault duration at which self-organised behaviour occurs at the disturbed operating point. To make it easier to show the details, in the picture uses the angle system.().
a. The projection of the disturbed trajectory in the plane, fitted using the equation .
b. The projection of the disturbed trajectory in the plane, fitted using the equation .
c. The projection of the disturbed trajectory in the plane, fitted using the equation . Notably, descended at .
d. The projection of the disturbed trajectory in the plane, fitted using the equation ,where .
e. The projection of the disturbed trajectory in the plane, fitted using the equation .
Figure 3.a and 3.b show that the operating points move with a uniformly variable speed before the system becomes unstable.
Contrary to intuition
32,
suddenly dropped at
(
Figure 3.c). This anomaly suggested that the system appears to have a tendency to maintain its own stability.
Figure 3.d and E show that the perturbed trajectories of the subsystems of the coupled system are linearly correlated in the stability domain. This indicates that for a determined power grid, each perturbed trajectory has the same
,
being the global invariant of the system. The effects of perturbations are global, reflecting the challenges of controlling the stability of complex systems
33–35.
When a high degree of accuracy of the results is not needed,
. The following expression can be derived:
This can be used to easily and quickly check the stability margin of the system after a disturbance
36. By approximating
as the CCT
20,36, the coordinates of the critical stable operating point
and critical rate of the meta-generator
in the current system can also be estimated
37.
In summary, the CCT and UEP can be calculated using only information about the rotation rate10, but considering only a single information source may result in more errors. Theoretically, using directly as the CCT would also lead to a conservative result.
The current power system is receiving an increasing number of renewable energy sources. These sources are connected to the power grid via inverters, which may change the inertia of the system38–40, complicating the coefficients. This issue should be further studied.
On a finer scale, the operating points near the stability boundary exhibit unusual behavior (
Figure 4).
Figure 4.
Boundary effects of the 18bus three-phase short circuit to ground fault, with increased fault duration from 0.140s to 0.154s (), and the trajectory of the disturbed operating point near the boundary. The arrow shows the direction of increase of . The simulation result showed instability at =0.155s.
Figure 4.
Boundary effects of the 18bus three-phase short circuit to ground fault, with increased fault duration from 0.140s to 0.154s (), and the trajectory of the disturbed operating point near the boundary. The arrow shows the direction of increase of . The simulation result showed instability at =0.155s.
a. is the standard deviation of δ. started to fall at 0.147s and rose by 1300% at 0.155s when the system became unstable.
b. In the plane, operating points appeared to cross the barrier before they reached the boundary. The elliptical area marks the position of the barrier. From 0.147s onwards the interval between operating points decreased in the direction of increasing (shaded area).
c. In the plane, the graph is a critical state local attractor, which appears simultaneously with the synchronous barrier. The ellipse indicates the position of the attractor. The graph of the trajectory of the operating point from 0.147s onwards is shown as an attractor (in the shaded area).
As the stability boundary is approached, the perturbed trajectories of the operating points become interesting. The system self-organized and moved toward synchronous evolution41.
The decrease in
from the highest point indicated a tendency for the system to maintain its own stability before destabilizing and to spontaneously lead the velocities of the subsystems to the mean value. This may be the spontaneous synchronization effect caused by the coupling of the systems (
Figure 4). Spontaneous synchronization is precisely a self-organizing behavior, i.e., a phenomenon whereby initially unsynchronized coupled subsystems evolve toward synchronization
6,42. Spontaneous synchronization seems to occur near the synchronization stability boundary (Extended Figure 7). For coupled network systems, this strong correlation indicates that the location where spontaneous synchronization occurs is also determined in
by Eq.1
2,41. This may indicate that the mechanism of spontaneous synchronization is not necessarily related to the network topology, i.e., synchronization on the network may be independent of the network
43–45. This will challenge the traditional perception of synchronization in networks. At the same time, the correlation may also indicate that physically, the synchronous stability boundary may originate from spontaneous synchronisation effects.
The generators spontaneously exchanged energy through coupling to synchronize and stabilize the system. This caused the coefficients in the fitted representation to change, which was reflected in the disturbed trajectory. When the conditions were correct (
and
is constant), a wonderful structure emerges from the trajectory of the operating points. Due to the constraint
and the same
, the perturbed trajectories of all meta-generators simultaneously exhibit this structure. Although the phenomenon of self-organization of synchronization is often used directly to explain the synchronous operation of generators, this structure has rarely been reported in the past. The synchronous barrier and the cycle were the results of the self-organizing behavior in the
and
planes, respectively (
Figure 4). The perturbed trajectory of the generator shows the same result at the same time (Extended
Figure 3), proving that this is not caused by a substitution effect but by the emergent nature of the system at the boundary
After the operating point crosses the potential barrier,
rises sharply (
Figure 4 and Extended Figure 7) , and the system is no longer synchronized.
The behavior of the running point near the boundary is very complex. For example, it does not always result in the formation of a synchronous potential barrier (see Extended Fig 6). The reasons for this difference, or rather, the specific conditions for the formation of this particular structure of synchronized barrier and more information awaits further research.