Safety Guarantees for the Electricity Grid with Significant Renewables Generation

This work presents a study of the frequency dynamics of the electricity grid under significant presence of generation from renewable sources. A safety requirement, namely ensuring that frequency does not deviate excessively from a reference level, is formally studied by means of probabilistic model checking of a finite-state abstraction of the grid dynamics. The dynamics of the electric network comprise a model of the frequency evolution, which is in a feedback connection with a model of renewable power generation by a heterogeneous population of solar panels. Each panel switches independently between two states (ON and OFF) in response to frequency deviations, and the power generated by the population of solar panels affects the network frequency response. A power generation loss scenario is analysed and its consequences on the overall network are formally quantified in terms of probabilistic safety. We thus provide guarantees on the grid frequency dynamics under several scenarios of solar penetration and population heterogeneity.