Prospects of a new dynamic simulation software for real-time applications on the Hydro-Québec system

Hydro-Québec has a long interest in on-line Dynamic Security Assessment (DSA) driven by its challenging system dynamics. Presently, off-line calculated security limits are combined with an on-line monitoring system. However, new developments in dynamic simulation enable real-time or near-real-time DSA calculations and transfer limits determination.
In this paper, the domain-decomposition-based algorithm implemented in the simulator RAMSES
is presented, along with techniques to accelerate its sequential and parallel executions. RAMSES exploits the localized response to disturbances and the timescale decomposition of dynamic phenomena to provide sequential acceleration when the simulation is performed on a single processing unit. Additionally, when more units are available, the parallelization potential of domain-decomposition methods is exploited for further acceleration.
The algorithm and techniques have been tested on a realistic model of the Hydro-Québec system to evaluate the accuracy of dynamic responses and the sequential and parallel performances. Finally, the real-time capabilities have been assessed using a shared-memory parallel processing platform.