IEEE Power & Energy Magazine - September/October 2015 - 20

British
Columbia

Alberta

Washington

Oregon

functions in its rc area in the western interconnection.]
the wecc is the regional entity responsible for compliance
monitoring and enforcement.
wecc (see Figure 1) is geographically the largest and
most diverse of the eight regional reliability entities, spanning from part of canada to portions of mexico with 14 U.s.
states and delegated authority from the north american
electric reliability corporation.

Montana

Idaho

Nevada

Wyoming

Utah

Synchrophasor Applications and Benefits

Colorado
New Mexico

lifo

Arizona

PDC-dc Link, 1,000 kV
PACI-ac Corridor, 500 kV
PACI-ac NE / SE, 345 kV

figure 1. Major intertie corridors in the WECC.

and operation of the bulk electric system reliability in the
western interconnection of north america. [Peak reliability (Peak) was formed as a result of the bifurcation of the
wecc into a regional entity (wecc) and a regional coordinator (Peak). the bifurcation of the wecc received final
approval from the Federal energy regulatory commission
on 12 February 2014. Peak, a company wholly independent
of the wecc, performs the rc and interchange authority

Reliability

wide-area monitoring protection and control systems are
important enablers in the power system to meet the challenges
of the 21st century electrical grid. there are many existing and
potential applications of synchronized measurement technology ranging from monitoring and situational awareness tools
to system-integrity protection schemes. synchronized measurement applications have been deployed throughout the wecc
region to improve system reliability and increase the understanding of system behavior. applications include system performance baselining, event analysis, model validation, instability and oscillation detections, reactive power management,
restoration, harmonic determination, fault location, and fast
transient analysis, all offering significant reliability and financial benefits for the interconnected electrical grid. advanced
applications already deployed for real-time operation purposes
include a safety net to address voltage stability risks and an
adaptive protection scheme for improved reliability. the safety
net scheme takes wide-area synchronized phase-angle measurements to assess voltage stability and arms fast insertion of shunt
capacitors along the intertie. in the adaptive protection scheme,
the PmU measurements (from key locations within neighboring systems), track system conditions to support applications
such as grid dynamics in real time and provide data for adaptive
protection system. a higher reporting rate of time-synchronized

Constraint Relief

Sustainability

Situational Awareness

Stability (Damping) Constraints

Renewable Connections

Identifying Sources of
Oscillations

Angle Constraints

Impact of Renewables
on Stability

Vulnerability Detection
Automated Wide-Area
Protection
Identifying Equivalent
Dynamic Models

WAMS + DSA (Integration of
"Measurement-Based" and
"Model-Based" Security
Assessment)

Distribution Management

Angle-Based Control

Analysis Tools, e.g.,
- Post Mortem
- Dynamic Model Validation
- Baselining

figure 2. A summary of the business case benefits recognized within the WECC region.
20

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september/october 2015

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Power & Energy Magazine - September/October 2015