February 2022

I am grateful to the Technical Program chairs of the 2022 IEEE International Conference on Smart Grid Synchronized Measurements and Analytics (SGSMA 2022) for accepting our panel proposal titled “Towards a Zero Inertia Grid thanks to Synchrophasor Measurements”. I have been delighted to have Prof. Yilu Liu (University of Tennessee at Knoxville), Dr. Evangelos Farantatos (EPRI),  Dr. Deepak Ramasubramanian (EPRI, on behalf of UNIFI), Dr. Qiteng Hong (University of Strathclyde, Glasgow) and Dr. Krish Narendra (Electric Power Group) accept my invitations to join this panel and contribute their expertise and experiences on the matter.

What we will be talking about revolves around how the electrical grid shifting to renewables and batteries, entails the shift to resources interfacing with the power system via power electronics – inverter, rectifiers and converters. As these devices and the sources they interface are characterized by fast dynamics, the traditional control paradigm followed to the day cannot suffice. The reason is that the phenomena that used to span seconds (thanks to large rotating inertias of conventional generators), will now be unfolding in milliseconds. Hence, the operators’ response times in the control rooms will be very limited. Thankfully, synchrophasors and the applications they enable can match these time-frames and allow for the transition to a new control paradigm.

I look forward to the conference and hope to be attending it in person in the beautiful town of Split in Croatia.