2004 Intematlonal Conference on Power System Technology POWERCON 2004 Singapore, 27-24 November 2004

Static and Dynamic Under-frequency Load Shedding: A Comparison

A. A. Mohd Z n Senior Member, IEEE, H. Mohd Hafcz, Member, IEEE and W. K. Wong i,
balanced state is disturbed, the s s e frequency changes as in ytm Table 1 below:
TABLE I
BE~vroROPPOWERSYSTEMFREQUENCYUNDER~E~BINATIONSOF GENERATION DEMAND AND

Abstract-Safe operation of a power system will require that system frequency is kept within a specified range. When the generation is insufficient due to disturbances, the frequency might fa11 under the minimum allowable value which may lead to system blackout if not properly counteracted. This frequency decline may be corrected by shedding certain amount of load so that the system is back into balanced state. I n this paper several under-frequency load shedding schemes are reviewed. Comparison are made between static scheme which shed a fured, oredetermined amount of load a t each staee and a dvnamic system which shed the load by taking into account the siz; of the disturbance and the voltage and frequency characteristics. Simulations were done on a five buses power system to obtain the amount of load shed, minimum under-frequency, number of stages and completion time. ResuIts from the dynamic scheme appear to give a better frequency recovery.
Index Terms-Under-frequency

From Table 1, it is obvious that the sudden loss of generation would result in the decrease in system frequency. The decline in fiequency occurs very rapidly and if left ytm unattended will lead to s s e collapse.

The decline in frequency is due to insufficient amount of generation that meets load demand, This will cause the load to and dynamic. acquire power fiom the stored kinetic energy in a rotating system and hence slowing the rotation (kquency). Most I. INTRODUCTION electrical macbines are designed to operate under frequency of LECTRICITY is regarded as one of the indispensable 50 Hz. Any frequency violation may cause damage to the means to growth of any countrys economy. This source machines. If a considerable amount of generation is lost, the of power is the heartbeat of everything from the huge only effective way to correct the imbalance is to quickly shed metropolitans, industries, worldwide computer networks, and the load before the frequency falls so low that will eventually ow global communication system down to our homes. The damage the system. main objective of any generation and distribution utility is to satisfy the demand of customers with a highquality product. II. UNDER-FREQUENCY SHEDDING LOAD Tbis product namely electricity must be supplied continuously round the clock. To ensure this quality, the voltage and A. Principles and Fundamentals Under-frequency load shedding (UFLS) is defined as a ffequency should be constant during normal operation, and coordinated set of controls which results in the decrease of uninterrupted service requirement should be satisfied. electrical loads in the power system. Tbis set of possible One of the important requirements in power system is to corrective actions aims at forcing the perturbed system to a ensure that sufficient power is generated to meet load demand new equilibrium state (balancing the load and generation and under normal and emergency conditions. Under normal power thus maintaining system frequency within nominal range). system operation, the system is k q t balance by providing a The load shedding system is composed of several stages; each supply of generation that meet the load demand and systems of them is characterized by tripping frequency, amount of load and delay before tripping. The objective of an optimal load loss as given in Equation (1) below: shedding scheme is to curtail a minimum amount of load, and at the same time provide a quick, smooth and safe transition of Total Generation = Total Load + TofdLoss (1) the system fiom emergency situation to a post emergency condition. Under this balanced condition,the system will operates at the synchronous eequency of 50 Hz. In the event of that this A computational solution is necessary to determine a minimal amount of toad to be shed, the required number of A. A. Mohd Zin, A. Mohd Hafiz and W.K. Wong are with the Faculty of stages, operating time (speed) and amount of load to be shed EIectrical Engineering. Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, 81310 UTM Johor, at each individual stage. There are various types of load Malaysia (e-mail: mhafi@fke.utm.my).
Load Shedding, UFLS, static

0-7103-8610-8104/$20.00 0 2004 IEEE

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ytm shedding schemes proposed and discussed in literature and will have a large impact on an already weakened s s e . applied by the utilities. Generally the scheme can be divided However the drawback is that it takes longer time to stabilize into static load shedding schemes and dynamic or adaptive the frequency. load shedding scheme. C. Dynamic Load Shedding Dynarmc load shedding on the other hand curtails dynamic Frequency is a reliable indicator of generation defiency or amount of load at each stage by taking into account the overload condition. A load shedding action is realized by an under-frequency relay, which issues a trip signal to the circuit magnihlde of disturbance, voltage and frequency breaker when the system frequency falls under the relay's characteristic of the system at each stage. This allows for the frequency setting. The tripping is done in several stages shedding of larger load for larger system imbalance, and comprising certain amount of load until the normal frequency smaller load for smaller system imbalance. is restored. Common practices by most utilities use 49.3 Hz as Opposed to the static load shedding scheme, the amount of the first ftequency step and between 48.5 and 48.9 Hz for the load to be shed is not fx d at each stage in dynamic UFLS. ie last step. Instead, larger amount of load is shed for larger system I general, the tripping frequencies for each stage are imbalance, and smaller load for smaller system imbalance. n distinct enough so that each stage has enough time to Hence the time required to settle down the frequency influence the frequency before the next stage trips. This is deviation is less. vital because if several stages involving large load shedding In order to deal with the minimization of the load block are curlailed at a time space very close together, an curtailment, a one step shedding scheme produces a better excessive amount of load might be shed resulting an overshoot in system frequency. In the event of large fiequency response than a stepping scheme, due to its one disturbance, characterized by very steep frequency decline, time bulk shed versus cascaded shedding [2] Therefore, a shedding the load based on a preset frequency with a dynamic or adaptive load shedding scheme is favored over predetemzined amount of load may not be adequate enough to static load shedding scheme. prevent sharply declining fiequency before the power system Nowadays the most of the existing UFLS plans adopted by destabilizes. Therefore it is important that the load is not only shed based on the fiequency alone, but on the rate of power system's operator is of a static type. As a consequence, UFLS very often disconnects more or less load than is frequency decline as well. required. There are several methods of dynamic or adaptive U Load shedding scheme based on frequency alone has UFLS proposed and discussed in literature [3]-171. A several disadvantage, among which are load may tripped approaches are based on the use of the generator swing unnecessarily at low import level and too much load tripped at equation. In [3] an adaptive methodology is given for the high import level [l]. This phenomenon, commonly known as setting the under-fkequency relays, based on the initial rate of over-tripping will cause the overshoot of frequency. The change of fiequency at the relay. In [3] a method using both reason being is that the system might not be able to recover ftequency and voltage changes is presented. In (43 an adaptive fast enough between steps of tripping which leads to scheme that uses both frequency and rate of change of unnecessary tripping, The use of rate of frequency change fkequency measurement to dynamically set under-frequency relays is presented. (df/dt) is proposed, which provides advantages as follows:
D

a
D

One can begin tripping load blocks without waiting until the frequency drops critically. Steps can trip simultaneously instead of sequentially. Improved response time. Flexible and can be tailored to different level of imports Reduced frequency swing.

IIL LOADSHEDDING ALGORITHM The purpose of this study is to evaluate and compare the
performance of the two types of load shedding algorithm. The amount of load shed, m n " and maximum frequency as i i well as the speed w l be recorded. The static load shedding i l algorithm used in this study is the one from (81 and for dynamic load shedding, the algorithm formulated by 191.

There are various types of load shedding schemes, of which A. Static Load Shedding Algorithm may be grouped into two - static load shedding and dynamic The equations required in calculating the parameters load Shedding. involved in performing static load shedding at each stage are given as follows [SI: B. Sialic Loud Shedding Static load shedding curtails constant block of load at every G-D stage. The calculation of time to shed the load is acquired Initial overload, Uyj =G from the system overload and rate of change of frequency. In static load shedding scheme, it is better to have more stages, but with smaller load i each stage, to minimize over- Initial dfldt. n shedding. Moreover, tripping a big block of load at one time

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Initial time

q=-- -1 F:
df /
-/dti

Load shed time,

Load shed frequency, Overload a h r load shed,

TI = q + T,

F, = E;I + d dt, x T, f

(/

(6)

Calculate Wdt of system

05
dfldt after load shed,
Compute load shed time

where
G = Generation
D = Demand f = Nominal fiequency
timerlelav

F[ = Initial fiequency T = Circuit operating time + delay

H = Total inertia i MW-sec/MvA n

I
Fig. 1. Flowchart of a static load shedding procedure

and subscript i andfindicates beginning of stage and after load is shed respectively.
B. Dynamic Load Shedding Algorithm In dynamic load shedding algorithm [9], the amount of real and reactive power after load shedding i calculated using the s following equations:

BEGIN

Determine system Calculate dudt of system

Is Wdt <
-1QWS

Shed load proportionalto

! of gmmtion 4

lwses

where -P, ,Q, = Non-curtailed real and reactive pawer of load iMw) P ,Ql = Amount of real and reactive , power after curtailment K , , = Frequency characteristic of load (h) K,
p , ,q, = Constant real and reactive power

Compute load cutailment values

Shed load block

introduce l ODms b e delay

Fig. 2. Flowchart of a dynamic load shedding procedure

proportional to total load (%) p , I q, = Nth power of voltage proportional to total load (YO) p, ,q2 = Constant impedance load propoaianal to A. The Test System total load (%) A test s s e ,made up of 5 buses is used to investigate the ytm N = Number of buses in the system behavior of the static and dynamic load shedding scheme. The system consist 2 generators located at two buses, connected to C. Procedures Involved the rest of the system through a transformer. The 3 remaining The procedures involved i performing both static and buses are connected to the load. The tota1 active load in the n dynamic load sheddmg are summarized i a flowchart given system is 730 MW and the reactive load is 310 W A R .Initial n in Fig. 1 and Fig.2 respectively. generation is 764 MW and 445 WAR.

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B. Simulation o Selected Case f One contingency is simulated to give a 350 M W generation losses. The frequency of the system start to decline rapidly to a value of 45.0 Hz withul2 seconds if no corrective measure is taken. In this case, the power system will inevitably collapse, leading to system's blackout (Fig. 3).
U'

3
+ I

4g.

I Mlnlmum Frequency

D 47.SOHr Orershoot I tiO.4oHz

(8.00:

......................
a*

io

9 s

r$

; ;

Tima (Sec.}
Fig.3. Frequencydecline due t 350 MW generation losses o

In the static load shedding algorithm, the load shedding is initiated when the fkquency f a h below 49.5 Hz. Each stage will shed 50MW of load. Calculation using static load shedding algorithm shows that the tkquency stabilizes after 8 stages w t the amount of load shed is 400 MW. The -aflmdw ih frequency trace of the simulation is given in Fig. 4. I wG l y "

Sheddina
i

, ,

400 MW 46.65 Hz

350 M W 50.40 Hz

It could be observed that using dynamic load shedding scheme have greater advantages compares to the static load shedding scheme. The fmt advantage is that the dynamic load shedding scheme results in higher minimum under-fiquency value and lower frequency overshoot. The overshoot is due to overshedding of Imd. Second advantage the time to perform load shedding is shorter wt reduced number of stages. The next ih advantage will be the reduced amount of load need to be shed (static - 400 MW and dynamic- 350 MW).
rfml tu=./

Fig. 4. Frequency trace plot of a static load shedding

In the dynamic load shedding schemes, a total of 350 MW of load i shed in four stages. The first stage shed 175 MW, s which corresponds to 4 of generation loss since the frequency ! decline rate is 13.33 Hzls. In the next 3 stages, 100 MW,60 MW and 15 MW we shed respectively. n e frequency recovery is shown in Fig. 5 .

V. DISCUSSIONS The advantage o f dynamic load shedding over static load shedding is that the former arovide outimal amount of load to be shed, higher minimum under-fieequency, and faster operation with less number of stages. The amount of load to be shed is obtained as a nun-integer 191. In practical situation, this value cannot be used. Practically, load shedding is performed by opening circuit breakers at distribution feeders to shed off blocks of loads of a fixed mount. Therefore, the amount obtained fiom the algorithm is rounded to the nearest load block amount,
Y

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Previous study on comparison of various load sheddig schemes in [IO] stated that the major drawback of using the dynamic load shedding in 191 is the algorithm's inability to converge during emergency condition due to over definition of s s e generation through the govetnot action and the poor ytm reconciliation of the fkquency variations applied to the load model equations. Future study will seek an improved algorithm that will ensure convergence in an emergency condition. Several factors such as the Spinning reserves, the usage of capacitor banks and presence of synchronous machine or induction motor will be considered in order to come out with an optimal dynamic load shedding scheme.

H. Mobd Hafu (S'2002, M ' 2 W ) received his B.Eng. aud M.Eng. degrees i Electrical engineering from n Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, in 2000 and 2003 respectively. Current@be is a ledurer in the Faculty of Elecixica1 Engineaing, Universiti Teknologi Malapia. His mearch interest is on the power system protection and the application of AI i power system n

VI. CONCLUSIONS
The paper has examined the two types of load shedding schemes. A comparison is made between the static and dynamic load schemes. It is observed that the dynamic scheme can do the job optimally in term of high speed, higher minimum under-frequency add minimum possible amount of load shed.

A. A, MohdZin is curreatly a Professor,and Head of Electrical Power Engineering Department, Faculty o f E l e 6 c a l Engineerin$, Univmiti Tehologi Malaysia. He received his B.Sc. d (1976) h m Gadjah Mada e w Univmi&y, Indonesia, M.Sc. degree (1981) h m University of Slrathclyde, Uuited Khgdom and Ph.D
degree (1988) fiom UMIST, United Kingdom. He authordco-authorsd OVR 80 techrucal papers. His research interests include power system protection, application of neural network in power system, arcing fault in underground cables, power quality and dynamic equivalent of power system. D .Abdullah r is also a Corporate M m e of Institution of Engineers, Malaysia @EM), a ebr Member of IEE (VK) and a Senior Member of IEEE (USA). He is a registered Professional Engineer Q.Eng.)in Malaysia ad Chartered n (C.Eng.) United Kingdm i n

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