Impacts of Communication Network Availability on Synchrophasor-Based DTR and SIPS Reliability

The modern electricity network has become smarter and more reliable because of the addition of information and communication technology. Dynamic thermal rating systems (DTR) allow existing transmission lines to be operated much closer to their limits. However, line outages after DTR implementation could threaten network security. Thus, system integrity protection schemes (SIPS), which are designed to ensure security, are useful to forestall impending contingencies that could arise from DTR implementation. Furthermore, synchrophasors can improve wide-area monitoring and protection capabilities. However, the reliability of these technologies considering their communication network availability is yet to be studied in a unified framework. Therefore, a novel framework of synchrophasor-based DTR and SIPS is presented while examining eight DTR network topologies and two SIPS schemes simultaneously. A sequential Monte Carlo simulation-based technique is proposed to simulate the effect of the topologies on system-wide reliability. This method is tested on the IEEE-RTS. Results show an improvement of 93.27% between DTR communication Schemes 1 and 8 in load curtailment. More importantly, the article reveals an improvement of 99.15% in the load curtailment value in scenarios where SIPS is deployed compared with the case where SIPS is not deployed, highlighting the benefits of DTR and SIPS hybrid implementation.