Management of the geomagnetically induced current risks on the national grid company's electric power transmission system

The National Grid Company plc (NGC) is the owner and operator of one of the world's largest privatised high-voltage electric power transmission systems in England and Wales at 400 and 275 kV. As owner operator it is responsible for the secure and reliable delivery of electrical energy to all the 25 million electricity supply customers in England and Wales. The transmission and distribution systems in UK have experienced significant effects during past geomagnetic storm events especially during solar cycles 21 and 22. These effects included generator reactive power output swings, voltage dips, negative sequence alarms and transformer failures. Geomagnetically induced current (GIC) monitoring was installed in 1989 and operational procedures were put in place based on global solar weather forecasts. These measures were not capable of delivering reliable information and thus gave many false operational alarms. Their only real use was for post event forensic purposes, Since the cycle 22 solar peak activity the UK transmission system has developed to become more meshed, heavily loaded and dependent on the availability of reactive compensation equipment for voltage control. NGC carried out GIC impact risk assessment in 1998. This reviewed available options for managing this risk including investigation of blocking measures, a reliable local GIC forecast, GIC monitoring, a review of transmission equipment capabilities to withstand GIC conditions and operational procedures to manage the risk. As a result of the risk assessment NGC completed installation of a Metatech Spacecast/Powercast space weather forecasting system in May 1999. EPRI Sunburst 2000 based transformer monitoring systems were fully integrated in January 2000 in time for peak solar storm activity in solar cycle 23. This paper will describe the risk analysis undertaken, the risk management processes put in place and the performance of the forecasting and monitoring systems, respectively. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.