Fast Assessment of Frequency Response of Cold Load Pickup in Power System Restoration

In this paper, we introduce an approach for a fast assessment of the dynamic characteristics of system frequency during the period of cold load pickup following a large-scale blackout. The approach is developed based on a load model and a model of generation control system: the load model considers the unique time-dependent characteristic of inrush power surges during the period of cold load pickup, while the model of generation control system mimics the characteristics of various governors that are crucial to the determination of the key variables including initial rate of frequency change, frequency nadir and settling frequency. With the proposed linearization and estimation methods, the model of generation control system can be quickly constructed to offer a great amount of flexibility and simplicity for the study of the impact of cold load on frequency response. The proposed approach allows system operators to quickly evaluate many different options for system restoration. The application of the proposed approach is demonstrated in a case study based on the IEEE 39-bus system. The differences between the results obtained using the proposed approach and those obtained from complete PSS/E simulation are very small, which suggests that the linearized model of generation control system is fast, and accurate enough to address the major concerns of cold load pickup in system restoration.