Modeling Phase Shifters in Power System Simulations Based on Reduced Networks

Phase shifters are becoming widespread assets operated by transmission system operators to deal with congestions and contingencies using non-costly remedial actions. The setting of these controllable devices, which impacts power flows over large areas, may vary significantly according to the operational conditions. It is thus a key challenge to model phase shifters appropriately in power system simulation. In particular, accounting for the flexibility of phase shifters in reduced network models is a vibrant issue, as system stakeholders rely more and more on reduced models to perform studies supporting operational and investment decisions. Different approaches in the literature are proposed to model phase shifters in reduced network. Nevertheless, these approaches are based on the electrical parameters of the system which are not suitable for reduced network models. To address this problem, our paper proposes a methodology and assesses the impact of this contribution in terms of accuracy of the modelling on reduced network models. The approach was applied to a realistic case-study of the European transmission network that was clustered into a reduced network consisting of 54 buses and 82 branches. The reduction was performed using classical clustering methods and represented using a static power transfer distribution factor matrix. The simulations highlight that including an explicit phase shifter transformers representation in reduced models is of interest, when comparing with the representation using only a static power transfer distribution factor matrix.