An Open-Source Tool for Automated Power Grid Stress Level Prediction at Balancing Authorities

The behavior of modern power systems is becoming more stochastic and dynamic, due to the increased penetration of variable generation, demand response, new power market structure, extreme weather conditions, contingencies, and unexpected events. It is critically important to predict potential system operational issues so that grid planners and operators can take preventive actions to mitigate the impact, e.g., lack of operational reserves. In this paper, an innovative software tool is presented to assist power grid operators in a balancing authority in predicting the grid stress level over the next operating day. It periodically collects necessary information from public domain such as weather forecasts, electricity demand, and automatically estimates the stress levels on a daily basis. Advanced Neural Network and regression tree algorithms are developed as the prediction engines to achieve this goal. The tool has been tested on a few key balancing authorities and successfully predicted the growing system peak load and increased stress levels under extreme heat waves.