Improving power quality in accelerator
electrical power distribution grids
As part of the fast measurement systems developments CERN, together with Swiss smart grid solutions company Zaphiro Technologies, are deploying 24 phasor measurement units (PMUs) in selected locations across CERN’s electrical power grid, as shown, significantly enhancing its monitoring capabilities.
By validating these solutions through demonstrator projects, one of which will take place at CERN, RF2.0 seeks to reduce accelerators’ environmental impact and benefit other energy-intensive facilities, for example medical centers, data centers and other industrial plants, with innovative, flexible energy management strategies.
The benefits for CERN
The electrical power distribution systems in particle accelerator facilities typically use standard SCADA systems characterised by slower dynamics, as is the case at CERN. The deployment of PMUs will provide several benefits, including the ability to:
- Analyse perturbations coming from the upstream electrical transmission grid
- Understand how these perturbations can impact CERN’s electrical power grid as well as various subsystems and components
- Increase grid resilience and provide guidelines for future accelerators, in particular the proposed Future Circular Collider (FCC)
With the help of the PMUs, which are capable of monitoring voltage and current fluctuations in real-time with high sampling frequency and accuracy, CERN aims to:
- Create, in collaboration with Karlsruhe Institute of Technology a data-fed digital twin of CERN’s main electrical power grid focusing on the LHC
- Monitor the power quality of the grid and perform harmonic content analysis with the aim to better understand and classify in categories the various types of disturbances and identify mitigation actions and possible optimisations to increase the efficiency of the electrical power grid
- Communicate detected events to the SCADA system
A version of this article was originally published on CERN’s EU Projects Office website, at this link
Motivation and Objectives from the deployment of PMUs on CERN’s electrical power grid
