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This paper investigates the design of effective input signals for low-level probing of power systems. In 2005, 2006, and 2008 the Western Electricity Coordinating Council (WECC) conducted four large-scale system-wide tests of the western interconnected power system where probing signals were injected by modulating the control signal at the Celilo end of the Pacific DC intertie. A major objective of these tests is the accurate estimation of the inter-area electromechanical modes. A key aspect of any such test is the design of an effective probing signal that leads to measured outputs rich in information about the modes. This paper specifically studies low-level probing signal design for power-system identification. The paper describes the design methodology and the advantages of this new probing signal which was successfully applied during these tests. This probing input is a multi-sine signal with its frequency content focused in the range of the inter-area modes. The period of the signal is over 2 min providing high-frequency resolution. Up to 15 cycles of the signal are injected resulting in a processing gain of 15. The resulting system response is studied in the time and frequency domains. Because of the new probing signal characteristics, these results show significant improvement in the output SNR compared to previous tests. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper proposes a regularized robust recursive least squares (R3LS) method for online estimation of power-system electromechanical modes based on synchronized phasor measurement unit (PMU) data. The proposed method utilizes an autoregressive moving average exogenous (ARMAX) model to account for typical measurement data, which includes low-level pseudo-random probing, ambient, and ringdown data. A robust objective function is utilized to reduce the negative influence from nontypical data, which include outliers and missing data. A dynamic regularization method is introduced to help include a priori knowledge about the system and reduce the influence of under-determined problems. Based on a 17-machine simulation model, it is shown through the Monte Carlo method that the proposed R3LS method can estimate and track electromechanical modes by effectively using combined typical and nontypical measurement data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The frequency and damping of electromechanical modes offer considerable insight into the dynamic stability properties of a power system. The performance properties of three mode-estimation block-processing algorithms from the perspective of near real-time automated stability assessment are demonstrated and examined. The algorithms are: the extended modified Yule Walker (YW); extended modified Yule Walker with Spectral analysis (YWS); and sub-space system identification (N4SID). The YW and N4SID have been introduced in previous publications while the YWS is introduced here. Issues addressed include: stability assessment requirements; automated subset selecting identified modes; using algorithms in an automated format; data assumptions and quality; and expected algorithm estimation performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]