MATGMD: A Tool for Enabling GMD Studies in MATLAB

Abstract

Geomagnetic disturbance (GMD) has the potential to cause Geomagnetically Induced Currents (GICs) that disturb the power grid by circulating harmonics in the system. These quasi-dc currents give rise to additional reactive power losses in high-voltage transformers. Their combined presence can result in a loss of reactive power support that could even lead to a total voltage collapse. GMD events effecting the grid at such a scale render their study important. MATGMD is an open-source MATLABR based package for Geomagnetic disturbance studies that provides tools for analyzing uniform electric field GMD events to extract crucial system information like transformer neutral currents, for one. Various such system values could be used for stability, mitigation or estimation studies by researchers, educators and students. Efforts have been made to make more system information available using as little input data as possible. This paper presents the details of the network modeling and the corresponding formulations used by MATGMD. It discusses the flexibility with which the GMD related system information can be extracted as per the need of the user depending on the nature of study to be carried out. Simulation results for two test cases are presented using techniques to compare them with output obtained from PowerWorldR Simulator.