Power system blackouts occur due to system-wide instability brought forth through a combination of dynamic events. Due to availability of system-wide synchrophasor data, it has become possible to conceive and apply real-time protection and control schemes that detect causes and symptoms of instabilities, and respond to arrest the progression of blackouts. However, detailed dynamic data from an actual blackout would be desirable for validation of such schemes. This poster describes the process of dynamically simulating the September 8, 2011 blackout in the Southwestern United States.

The overarching goal is to employ a Wide-Area measurement-aided supervisory layer for correcting maloperation in relays, which can prevent system-wide blackouts. PSU’s task in this project is to ensure distinction between disturbance outlier and anomalous outlier in such Wide-Area measurements. This poster presents a Principal Component Analysis (PCA)-based method for online characterization of outliers in Wide-Area synchrophasor measurements. To that end, a linearized framework is established to analyze dynamical response from a system under nominal and off-nominal (e.g.