CPR-D Collapse Prediction Relay - a. eberle - #1

Get time to react.

CPR-D Collapse Prediction Relay

Chaos and Order

Blackouts are Expensive

Blackouts can be Avoided

Nowadays, electrical power systems experience

Chaos and order are often neigbouring closely

Due to the total electrical power blackout in Mid­west and Northeast United States and Ontario, Canada at August 2003, nearly a fourth of the whole electrical power grid of the USA was shut down. The outage affected an area with an estimated 50 million people. Estimates of total costs range up to 6 billion US-$. In the US there is a blackout with 500.000 people affected at every 4 months (J. Apt, Carnegie-Mellon-University). Consequence: Tremendous cost and financial loss are resulting in more and more expensive subsequent investments.

side by side and also undergo transitio

each the Saturn

increasi

ng vulnera ility

due to economical and

other. The divisions and gaps within

ecological demands, whose realization

drives

the

systems to their physical limits. Simultaneously, the load characteristics are in change. In this situation, for instance during power line tripping, the power system can easily exhibit a dynamic behaviour, which comes up with super­imposed oscillations at special frequencies. This system dynamics may lead to a collapse, when a "critical point", called Hopf-point, has been passed by.

rings indicate, that also in classical physical systems stable and regular trajectories are the exception.

An example: the 2nd-largest gap within the Saturn rings ("Encke-gap") is a region, where actually no stable orbit of celestial bodies should be possible. Yet, next to and inmidst of this region there do exist stability zones. Hence the little moon Pan in the Encke gap exhibits a stable orbital trajectory around Saturn.

Order and chaos are closely lying side by side in electrical power systems too, as it was demon­strated in the collapses (blackouts) in USA and Europe during the year 2003.

Blackouts, like those in New York and other collapse events in electrical power systems can compre­hensively be explained by the theories of nonlinear dynamics, bifurcations and deterministic chaos. (Dr M. Fette, System & Dynamics, Paderborn)

www.a-eberle.de