Wide Area Monitoring and Situational Awareness

Te power grid operating conditions are continually challenging-every second, every minute, and every hour of the day. This is because changes in electricity demand dictate immediate, instantaneous changes in electricity production; consequently, voltages, currents, and power flows are dynamically changing, at all times, all across the vast electricity delivery network called the power grid.Grid conditions need to be monitored in a timely periodic manner in order to immediately detect any adverse conditions, as soon as they arise, so that corrective actions could be implemented to mitigate potentially harmful conditions that could lead to a widespread grid collapse. Since there is a tremendous volume of constantly changing conditions across the grid, the challenge is to shift through these data to identify conditions that are potential imminent problems that need operator attention. The challenge is to convert vast amounts of data into useful information.