Event Tree Reliability Analysis of Electrical Power Generation Network using Formal Techniques

Abstract

In recent years, there has been a significant proliferation in the use of Renewable Energy Sources (RES), such as wind/solar systems, for power generation. However, the main obstacle that these resources face is their intermittent nature, which greatly affects their ability to deliver constant power to the power network. This raises several reliability-related concerns and existing sampling-based simulation tools, such as the Monte-Carlo approach, cannot guarantee absolute accuracy of the reliability analysis results due to their inherent incompleteness. In this paper, we propose to use formal techniques based on theorem proving to conduct the reliability analysis of electric grids as an accurate alternate approach. In particular, we use the HOL4 theorem prover, which is a computer-based mathematical reasoning tool. We demonstrate the effectiveness of our proposed approach by analyzing the reliability of the IEEE 39-bus power grid incorporating RES power plants and and also determine its reliability indices, such as System Average Interruption Frequency and Duration ($\mathcal{S}\mathcal{A}\mathcal{I}\mathcal{F}\mathcal{I}$ and $\mathcal{S}\mathcal{A}\mathcal{I}\mathcal{D}\mathcal{I}$). To assess the accuracy of our proposed approach, we compare our results with the commercial reliability analysis tool Isograph and the MATLAB toolbox based on Monte-Carlo approach.