Research

Matthew Grawe, Jonathan Makela, Mark Butala, and Farzad Kamalabadi published an article in the October 2018 issue of Space Weather which explores the influence of magnetometer sampling rate on modeled peak electric fields. They discovered that a one-minute magnetometer data cadence can lead to a significant underestimation of the peak electric field, especially in certain regions of the US during strong geomagnetic storms.

Read the full article on the AGU Publications website.

Gannon, Birchfield, Shetye, and Overbye published an article in the November 2017 issue of Space Weather investigating the fidelity of a one-dimensional model measuring the geomagnetically induced currents in a Pacific Northwest system. By comparing a 1-D model to a 3-D model, they explore specific limits of the traditional 1-D modeling system.

Read the full article on the AGU Publications website.

Kazerooni and Overbye presented a paper at the 2017 IEEE Power and Energy Conference at Illinois proposing a framework to generate the parameters necessary to use public test cases for GMD studies. Identifying the geographic coordinates of substations as vital but missing parameters, they present two graph drawing algorithms that allow these coordinates to be determined through a generated geographic layout. They then evaluate the effectiveness of their proposed framework.

Read the full article on IEEE Xplore.

Kazerooni, Zhu, and Overbye published a paper in the September 2017 issue of IEEE Transactions on Power Systems investigating a line switching strategy to mitigate geomagnetically induced currents in large-scale power systems. They describe an algorithm used to find an optimal switching strategy for specific outcomes, model its effect, and analyze its computational complexity in large system implementations.

Read the full article on IEEE Xplore.

Butala, Kazerooni, Makela, Kamalabadi, JGannon, Zhu, and Overbye published an article in the October 2017 issue of Space Weather exploring the fidelity of a model mapping geomagnetic disturbance measurements to geomagnetically induced currents. They compare data from their model to reference measurements provided by the American Transmission Company during three GMD intervals.

Read the full article on the AGU Publications website.

The Geospace Environment Modeling (GEM) program is a National Science Foundation (NSF) Division of Atmospheric Sciences initiative to coordinate and focus research on the near-earth portion of geospace from the lower ionosphere to where the earth system interacts with the solar wind.

Zhonghua XU, M D Hartinger, C R Clauer, H Kim, D R Weimer, and K Deshpande presented their findings at the AGU Fall Meeting in 2016 related to the wavelet-based ULF Pulsation Index. A wavelet-based index is described in this study and applied to present geomagnetic Ultra Low Frequency (ULF) pulsations observed in Antarctica and their magnetically conjugate locations in West Greenland. They discussed how the wavelet indices can be used to monitor geomagnetic pulsations in both hemispheres simultaneously.

Klauber and Zhu published a paper in Signals, Systems and Computer for the 5oth Asilomar Conference in 2016. They consider the problem of designing operational Geomagnetically Induced Current (GIC) mitigation strategies by switching transmission lines. This topology control approach could relieve the power network from temporarily high level of GIC flows, without significantly affecting the security of grid operations.

Read the full article on the IEEE Website

Kazerooni, Zhu, Overbye, and D. A. Wojtczak published a paper in the May 2017 IEE Transactions on Power Systems journal about transmission system Geomagnetically Induced Current (GIC) model validation. This paper focuses on validating the model which relates the GICs to their deriving electric field. A novel validation framework is proposed with the advantage of considering the system uncertainties and network information availability.

Read the full article on the IEEE Website

Birchfield, Gegner, Xu, Shetye, and Overbye published research on the statistical considerations of creating realistic synthetic power grids for geomagnetic disturbance studies. Their paper presents a process to generate synthetic power
system test cases, focusing on building cases appropriate for GMD studies. 

Read the full article on the IEEE website.