Power Network Topology Control for Mitigating the Effects of Geomagnetically Induced Currents

Solar storms can induce quasi-dc geomagnetically induced current (GIC) flows in power grids, which could potentially lead to transformer damage and system stability and reliability issues. We consider the problem of designing operational 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. We will cast the problem as a mixed-integer linear program, and develop computationally tractable solutions using linear sensitivity analysis to select candidate lines to change status while maintaining system connectivity. The effectiveness of the proposed method has been demonstrated using a 20-bus GIC test case.