Transmission line failures in power systems propagate and cascade non-locally. In this work, we propose an adaptive control strategy that offers strong guarantees in both the mitigation and localization of line failures. Specifically, we leverage the properties of network bridge-block decomposition and a frequency regulation method called the unified control. If the balancing areas over which the unified control operates coincide with the bridge-blocks of the network, the proposed strategy drives the post-contingency system to a steady state where the impact of initial line outages is localized within the areas where they occurred whenever possible, stopping the cascading process. When the initial line outages cannot be localized, the proposed control strategy provides a configurable design that progressively involves and coordinates more balancing areas. We compare the proposed control strategy with the classical Automatic Generation Control (AGC) on the IEEE 118-bus and 2736-bus test networks. Simulation results show that our strategy greatly improves overall reliability in terms of the N-k security standard, and localizes the impact of initial failures in the majority of the simulated contingencies. Moreover, the proposed framework incurs significantly less load loss, if any, compared to AGC, in all our case studies.
Transmission line failures in power systems propagate and cascade non-locally. This well-known yet counter-intuitive feature makes it even more challenging to optimally and reliably operate these complex networks. In this work we present a comprehensive framework based on spectral graph theory that fully and rigorously captures how multiple simultaneous line failures propagate, distinguishing between non-cut and cut set outages. Using this spectral representation of power systems, we identify the crucial graph sub-structure that ensures line failure localization -- the network bridge-block dec…
Increased complexity in cyber-physical systems calls for modular system design methodologies that guarantee correct and reliable behavior, both in normal operations and in the presence of failures. This paper aims to extend the contract-based design approach using a directive-response architecture to enable reactivity to failure scenarios. The architecture is demonstrated on a modular automated valet parking (AVP) system. The contracts for the different components in the AVP system are explicitly defined, implemented, and validated against a Python implementation.
Recently, reinforcement learning (RL) has been used as a tool for finding failures in autonomous systems. During execution, the RL agents often rely on some domain-specific heuristic reward to guide them towards finding failures, but constructing such a heuristic may be difficult or infeasible. Without a heuristic, the agent may only receive rewards at the time of failure, or even rewards that guide it away from failures. For example, some approaches give rewards for taking more-likely actions, because we want to find more-likely failures. However, the agent may then learn to only take likely …
Stanford University（斯坦福大学）；University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign（伊利诺伊大学厄巴纳-香槟分校）
Determining possible failure scenarios is a critical step in the evaluation of autonomous vehicle systems. Real-world vehicle testing is commonly employed for autonomous vehicle validation, but the costs and time requirements are high. Consequently, simulation-driven methods such as Adaptive Stress Testing (AST) have been proposed to aid in validation. AST formulates the problem of finding the most likely failure scenarios as a Markov decision process, which can be solved using reinforcement learning. In practice, AST tends to find scenarios where failure is unavoidable and tends to repeatedly…
This letter proposes a new control strategy for wind turbine generators to decide the necessity of switches between the normal operation and frequency support modes. The idea is to accurately predict an unsafe frequency response using a differential transformation method right after power imbalance is detected so as to adaptively activate a frequency support mode only when necessary. This control strategy can effectively avoid unnecessary switches with a conventional use of deadband but still ensure adequate frequency response.
Emerging applications of control, estimation, and machine learning, ranging from target tracking to decentralized model fitting, pose resource constraints that limit which of the available sensors, actuators, or data can be simultaneously used across time. Therefore, many researchers have proposed solutions within discrete optimization frameworks where the optimization is performed over finite sets. By exploiting notions of discrete convexity, such as submodularity, the researchers have been able to provide scalable algorithms with provable suboptimality bounds. In this paper, we consider such…
To ensure adequate and economic reserve for primary frequency response in the current and future power system, this paper proposes real-time frequency response reserve (FRR) requirement based on system inertia. This minimum FRR will help power system operators adjust the current frequency response requirement and accommodate more renewable generations while achieving a saving of both energy and facility costs. Most importantly, the ability to adaptively vary the FRR will provide the additional agility, resiliency, and reliability to the grid.
This letter proposes a distributed and adaptive demand response approach for primary frequency regulation in high-PV power systems. Using solar irradiance measurement at substations, the proposed approach allows accurate estimation of real-time system inertia of high-PV systems, thus facilitating the estimation of power imbalance after a contingency. The test results from the U.S. Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) high-PV penetration models validated its effectiveness.
FIRE: A Failure-Adaptive Reinforcement Learning Framework for Edge Computing Migrations
Information Systems and Technology and Design Pillar, Singapore University of Technology and Design（新加坡科技设计大学信息系统与技术与设计学院）；Electrical and Computer Engineering department, Carnegie Mellon University（卡内基梅隆大学电气与计算机工程系）；Shanghai Key Laboratory of Multidimensional Information Processing, School of Communications and Electronics Engineering, East China Normal University（华东师范大学通信与电子工程学院多维信息处理上海市重点实验室）；School of Information Engineering, Northwest A&F University（西北农林科技大学信息工程学院）；Roblox
Neural networks have become state-of-the-art for computer vision problems because of their ability to efficiently model complex functions from large amounts of data. While neural networks can be shown to perform well empirically for a variety of tasks, their performance is difficult to guarantee. Neural network verification tools have been developed that can certify robustness with respect to a given input image; however, for neural network systems used in closed-loop controllers, robustness with respect to individual images does not address multi-step properties of the neural network controll…
During the development of autonomous systems such as driverless cars, it is important to characterize the scenarios that are most likely to result in failure. Adaptive Stress Testing (AST) provides a way to search for the most-likely failure scenario as a Markov decision process (MDP). Our previous work used a deep reinforcement learning (DRL) solver to identify likely failure scenarios. However, the solver's use of a feed-forward neural network with a discretized space of possible initial conditions poses two major problems. First, the system is not treated as a black box, in that it requires…
