The Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority (PREPA) identified its island condition and the relatively large size of its generating units as main factors leading to unacceptable system performance (blackouts) when generation deficiency occurs. A team composed of the University of Puerto Rico at Mayagu ez, PREPA and Raytheon/Westinghouse has been created to evaluate possible solutions to Puerto Rico's rapid response spinning reserve insufficiency under generation deficiency conditions.
We propose a three part study to determine: the energy requirements (size) of an energy storage unit that will support Puerto Rico's electrical system with rapid spinning reserve to prevent a blackout under generation deficiency conditions; the technical and economic parameters required to design a Superconducting Magnetic Energy Storage (SMES) system to meet the previously mentioned energy storage requirements; and an operational and economic evaluation of alternative energy storage technology such as SMES and Battery Energy Storage Systems (BESS) to achieve the most economical solution to this problem.
2. Wind power utilization and its integration to Puerto Rico's primarily fossil fired generation system. A dynamic simulation study to determine the effect of the integration of several eolic generation centers into Puerto Rico's existing power grid.
3. Ph.D. dissertation ``Risk-based operating limits for dynamic security constrained electric power systems." In this work we: a. Developed a method that allows risk-based security assessment in an operating environment considering any type of security violation. b. Developed, using probability theory, expressions to calculate the conditional probability of insecurity given a fault occurs for thermal overloads and transient instability. c.Developed a method to generate risk-based operating limits in terms of parameters available to system operators, illustrated using nomograms based on risk rather than deterministic limits. The change from deterministic to risk-based operating limits is transparent to system operators since they just see new nomograms or tables. d. Investigated the effect of conventional protection systems on risk of an operating point. e. Participated in investigation of the effect of special protection schemes on risk of transient instability.
A modest facility that currently accomodates two Pentium II processor personal computers (plus support equipment such as printers, UPS, etc) and software to perform power systems analysis (PowerWorld, PSAPAC (EPRI's Ipflow, ETMSP, VSTAB, OAP, MASS, PEALS, DIRECT), MATLAB, PTI's PSS/E).