Power system disturbance location determination based on rate of change of frequency

1. A method for determining a location of a disturbance in a power system, comprising:

receiving data from a plurality of sensors distributed across the power system;

determining, with one or more processors, for each sensor, an extremum of the data corresponding to the sensor;

interpolating, with the one or more processors, the extrema;

determining a location corresponding to a global maximum of the interpolated extrema as the location of the disturbance; and

modifying an operation of at least one element in the power system to mitigate an impact of the disturbance on the power system based on the location of the disturbance.

2. The method of claim 1 , wherein the data is rate of change of frequency (ROCOF) data.

3. The method of claim 1 , further comprising, prior to the determining the extremum of the data, taking the absolute of the data.

4. The method of claim 1 , further comprising, prior to the interpolating the extrema:

determining a largest extremum among the extrema;

determining differences between the largest extremum and each of the remaining extrema; and

if each of the differences is greater than a predetermined threshold, skipping the interpolating and the determining the location, and determining a location of the sensor corresponding to the largest extremum as the location of the disturbance.

5. The method of claim 1 , further comprising, prior to the interpolating the extrema:

triangulating locations of the sensors using a Delaunay triangulation approach;

defining a region based on a geographic boundary of the sensors; and

partitioning the region to form a mesh grid including a plurality of points.

6. The method of claim 5 , wherein the interpolating the extrema comprises applying a bicubic two-dimensional interpolation to obtain the interpolated extrema at each of the plurality of points of the mesh grid.

7. A system, comprising:

a power system;

a plurality of sensors distributed across the power system; and

a computer system including one or more processors, and memory storing instructions that when executed by the plurality of processors causes the plurality of processors to perform operations comprising:

receiving data from the sensors;

determining, for each sensor, an extremum of the data corresponding to the sensor;

interpolating the extrema;

determining a location corresponding to a global maximum of the interpolated extrema as a location of a disturbance in the power system; and

modifying an operation of at least one element in the power system to mitigate an impact of the disturbance on the power system based on the location of the disturbance.

8. The system of claim 7 , wherein the data is rate of change of frequency (ROCOF) data.

9. The system of claim 7 , the operations further comprising, prior to the determining the extremum of the data, taking the absolute of the data.

10. The system of claim 7 , the operations further comprising, prior to the interpolating the extrema:

determining a largest extremum among the extrema;

determining differences between the largest extremum and each of the remaining extrema; and

if each of the differences is greater than a predetermined threshold, skipping the interpolating and the determining the location, and determining a location of the sensor corresponding to the largest extremum as the location of the disturbance.

11. The system of claim 7 , the operations further comprising, prior to the interpolating the extrema:

triangulating locations of the sensors using a Delaunay triangulation approach;

defining a region based on a geographic boundary of the sensors; and

partitioning the region to form a mesh grid including a plurality of points.

12. The system of claim 11 , wherein the operations comprise applying a bicubic two-dimensional interpolation to obtain the interpolated extrema at each of the plurality of points of the mesh grid.