Today’s LiveWire Spotlight addresses a recently released NERC Reliability Assessment that examines past oscillation events from the Eastern, Western, and Texas Interconnections to better understand the causes and forcing mechanisms. The study team applied a series of analyses to determine the shape, frequency, and damping levels of natural oscillations created by a BES fault or other cause.
The study team was able to reach a reasonable correlation between actual oscillation events and simulation outputs, but the lack of PMU coverage brings question to the results. Still, the Reliability Assessment recommends a series of further analyses that will enable entities in each Interconnection to identify where vulnerabilities exist.