Nonlinear Dynamics of Voltage Fluctuation in Power Plants for Strategic Decisions

Motivation of Study: Strategic Decision in Power Grid

The motivation of this study lay in the fact that if any time series reveals erratic behaviour, then such power plant may be identified and the resultant output voltage of the grid may be affected by introducing alternate sources of power such as hydel, wind etc. The hydro or wind based units are capable of quick start-up and generation escalation helping to mitigate such voltage fluctuations. This decision can only be taken by the Power Grid corporations and not by the individual power plants at the operational level. The nature of this decision is complex and involves high level strategic inputs. For a power grid corporation to be able to decide on selection of power generation technology and mode it needs exhaustive input that enables proper decision making. The large scale impact and resource involvement of such decision makes it vulnerable to the quality of analytical input that leads to the decision. Specially, in an emerging economy like that of India, any strategic decision regarding introduction of new technology and building new system calls for utmost care and deep insight before coming to any conclusion. The analysis of the time series representing the daily voltage output thus has to be able to bring out clearly the level and nature of instability in the voltage. A simple statistical analysis does not reveal a picture clear enough to aid the gird authorities to take a strategic decision. A deeper study analysing the nonlinear dynamics and chaos of the time series representing the voltage output of the power plants needs to be undertaken. Keeping this in mind, to analyze the behaviour of time series, we have used certain techniques evolved out of nonlinear dynamics. These techniques are very effective tools of analyzing any nonlinear time series. These tools effectively reveal whether the time series shows any degree of chaos or not. Such behaviours are not revealed by standard statistical tools. The analysis of the nonlinear dynamics of the time series clearly shows the gravity and impact of the problem which calls for classifying the same as a strategic problem. The analysis has been carried out extensively much for the appreciation about the dimensional complexity of the operations management problem besides developing an insight about nature and consequences of the fluctuations.