Grid-friendly fallback strategy for prosumer houseolds in case of widespread communication failures

Abstract:
The distribution grid operation is currently undergoing a transformation process. The integration of controllable loads, new generation and storage devices as well as the emergence of new players and business models in the energy market, perpetuates the implementation of information and communication infrastructure in the distribution grid. However, the response of the devices to a loss of communication is not regulated; hence if the communication infrastructure were to fail and a large number of devices share the same response, a simultaneity event may take place, which could lead to a large shift in power consumption or generation and therefore to changes in the frequency and consequent activation of frequency containment reserves. However, these reserves are designed to stabilize the frequency in case major power plants or transmission lines go unexpectedly out of service. As a result, a large activation of frequency containment reserves due to a wide-area loss of communication could lead to insufficient reserves in the event of additional faults in the system. In this work the impacts on the mid-term frequency stability and activation of frequency containment reserves due to a faulty communication infrastucture are analysed. To mitigate the influence of communication loss on system reliability, a fallback mode for such events is introduced and impacts on system behavior are analyzed. The results show that an early implementation of grid-supporting behaviour of information and communication infrastructure dependant components and fallback strategies in case of communication loss lead to an improvement in the considered metrics and hence to the reliability of the system.