AEMO will review control room processes to improve “situational awareness” after code whoopsy

First 14 of 14 paragraphs shown A review was planned after the Victorian Power System was in an insecure operating state between for some 86 minutes to 12:24 hrs on 6 October 2009
Total grid-crash averted: If the Hazelwood Power Station (HWPS) to Jeeralang Terminal Station (JLTS) No. 4 220 kV line had tripped during this period, the Hazelwood Terminal Station (HWTS) A3 500/220 kV transformer would have been loaded beyond its short time rating.
A few lines in the code: The insecure operating state occurred because of an interaction between two concurrent outages at HWPS, which was not identified by AEMO's outage assessment processes.
Control room boo boo: ”As a result of these concurrent outages the network constraints in place during the outage were not appropriate for the network arrangement, and were not effective at managing power system security.
Whoopsy: “Existing outage assessment processes did not detect this, in part because the actual generation dispatch during the outage did not match the expected generation dispatch obtained from PreDispatch used when assessing the outage”.
Eek!:” AEMO's constraint automation facilities were effective at restoring the power system to a secure state, however there was some delay after the initial contingency violations were detected before this was used, and the processes for responding to contingency violations could be improved”.
What AEMO learned: AEMO reported its procedures for assessing similar outages at HWPS will be reviewed and updated by the end of March 2010 to specifically consider:
- bus tie capability;
- use of maximum generation output in addition to the generation dispatch predicted by PreDispatch. By the end of March 2010 AEMO will review control room processes to assess whether situational awareness with regards to real time contingency violations can be improved for day to day operations.

...Log in to read rest of Article or image.