CIRED Workshop - Ljubljana, 7-8 June 2018 Paper 0119 Paper No 0119 Page 1 / 4 VALIDATING THE ELECTRA WEB-OF-CELL CONTROL CONCEPT – AN OVERVIEW OF POSSIBLE SIMULATION ENVIRONMENT ENHANCEMENTS Mattia CABIATI, Carlo TORNELLI RSE S.p.A. – Italy [mattia.cabiati; carlo.tornelli]@rse-web.it Christian SEITL, Thomas I. STRASSER AIT Austrian Institute of Technology – Austria [christian.seitl; thomas.strasser]@ait.ac.at ABSTRACT It is expected that future power systems will be charac- terized by a high share of renewables. Nowadays, a shift from conventional dispatchable bulk generators to in- termittent converter-coupled generation units can be observed. This trend, that will be always more signifi- cant in future, will affect the operation of the underlying power systems. Advanced automation and control con- cepts have the potential to address these challenges by providing new intelligent solutions and products. A proper validation of these new technologies is needed before their field installation. However, suitable devel- opment and testing approaches and the corresponding tools able to address system-level issues are partly missing until now. The aim of this paper is to discuss some experiences which have been made with simula- tion-based approaches in the EU-funded ELECTARA IRP project during the development and testing of a sophisticated distributed real-time control concept and its corresponding functions. INTRODUCTION The ongoing replacement of conventional bulk genera- tion with new power plants with different characteristics is one important change that is taking place in today’s power systems making its operation more complex. This trend, driven by political, environmental, and economic reasons is expected to be still growing in the next years. Conventional big power plants are nowadays replaced by smaller generation units, in most cases by Renewable Energies Sources (RES) [1]. They are connected at any voltage level and distributed along the electricity net- work. The characteristic of such Distributed Generators (DG) raises the concern of coordinating these new re- sources in supporting the power system operation. Due to non-continuous power production, difficultness in forecasting, and not fully dispatchability of such resources several problems arise. In order to master the higher complexity and the stochastic behaviour of these grid components, advanced automation and con- trol solutions and corresponding sophisticated algo- rithms are being realized resulting in a smarter grid behaviour [2]-[4]. Such approaches and technologies have been or being currently realized and validated in several research and development projects worldwide. Cell-based control concepts – as it has been previously developed within the ELECTRA IRP project [5] or other activities [7] – are highly interesting approaches in order to address the aforementioned challenges. However, the proof-of-concept evaluation of such so- phisticated smart grid solutions, especially the advanced control and automation concepts, is still a challenge through the whole development process (i.e., form the conceptual phase to the roll-out and field installation). Up to now suitable validation and testing methods at system-level covering power system and automa- tion/ICT 1 issues are partly missing [8]. Simulation-based validation approaches have a big potential and can cover several stages of the develop- ment process but they need to be improved and extend- ed. This work reports on some experiences which have been made during the control concept development and validation in the ELECTEA IRP project. WEB-OF-CELLS APPROACH In order to address the above outlined challenges and needs, the EU-funded ELECTRA IRP project has de- veloped the so-called Web-of-Cells (WoC) real-time control framework for operating the future power sys- tems with a high share of renewable sources and con- trollable loads [3]. In the following the overall concept and the corresponding control schemes are briefly out- lined and validation and testing needs for the proof-of- concept evaluation are discussed. Cell-based Real-time Control Concept The WoC concept considers that the power system is divided into smaller subsystems (i.e., cells) and reor- ganized in new cell-related roles and responsibilities as sketched in Figure 1. Each cell has to contribute to bal- ance/frequency and voltage controls and it is responsible for its behaviour at its boundaries. Cells can be consid- ered as a group of interconnected conventional and dis- tributed generators, storage units and controllable loads within well-defined electrical and geographical bounda- ries. They usually have enough flexibility to solve local problems – deviations from the scheduled consump- tion/generation schedule – locally within a cell. The approach looks quite similar to the well-known microgrid approach but the main difference is that cells are not self-sufficient and they are not intended to oper- ate in islanded mode. However, the WoC concept is designed in such a way that also grid-connected mi- crogrids can be included. 1 Information and Communication Technology