GOALI: ASCENT: Online Stability Assessment, Flexibility, and Enhancement of IBR-dominated Power Systems

This NSF project aims to develop a comprehensive theoretical framework for modeling, designing, sensing, and controlling the post-fault stability of future power systems with varying levels of inverter-based resources and synchronous generators. The project will use an innovative energy-function-based approach to study how system stability responds to configurations, pre-fault conditions, and faults. This work promises to transform how we assess and enhance the stability of power systems, advancing scientific knowledge in this critical field. The intellectual merits of the project include (1) using energy-function-based and direct methods for stability assessment, which significantly reduce the need for detailed time-domain simulations; (2) considering inverters' fast dynamics and generators' slow dynamics as a two-time-scale system, thereby simplifying the complexity of stability analysis; and (3) implementing bounded control theory to narrow the gap between simulation results and actual hardware performance, enhancing the practical applicability of the findings. The project outcomes will likely have a broader impact in diverse fields, including robotics, ecosystem modeling, and optimization. Creating an online stability assessment tool will benefit utility engineers, while an inverter design guide will inform and influence the work of the power electronics community. Additionally, the project will engage diverse individuals through various activities at the four participating institutions, reinforcing its educational and societal benefits. The technical goals of this project involve establishing the theoretical foundations of energy functions for two-time-scale systems, exploring the connection between power system stability and inverter controller dynamics, and minimizing discrepancies between power system models and inverter hardware. This will be accomplished by applying direct methods to identify stability regions, conducting theoretical investigations, and validating findings across software simulations, hardware-in-the-loop simulations, and a physical 108-converter network. As a Grant Opportunities for Academic Liaison with Industry (GOALI) project, the team will collaborate with a utility partner on a realistic transmission system model. The project will rigorously validate the proposed online transient stability assessment method on a 5000-bus system, encompassing a broad spectrum of IBR penetrations from 0 to 100%. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.