Artificial Intelligence for Determining the Cause of Low Voltage due to Insufficient Reactive Power Provision in the Transmission System

Due the German energy transition, conventional power plants are replaced by renewable energy sources. To maintain voltage in a defined voltage band, sufficient reactive power must be provided to the transmission grid. This is becoming increasingly difficult with the decommissioning of conventional power plants and increasing volatile reactive power demand of the grid due volatile feed-in behavior of renewable energy sources. As consequence, the operators are unpredictably faced with voltages that drop below the operational voltage in the transmission grid due to insufficient reactive power provision. To better deal with low reactive power reserves in the grid, these events are analyzed by transmission system operators. This paper explores the potential of machine learning methods to assist operators. The focus is on presenting a concept for data evaluation and root cause identification in power systems and their challenges using the example of voltage drops caused by insufficient reactive power supply.