Statistical Considerations in the Creation of Realistic Synthetic Power Grids for Geomagnetic Disturbance Studies

Studies to evaluate the power system impacts of geomagnetic disturbances (GMDs) can benefit from geographically realistic public test cases to validate methodologies and analysis tools. Presently very few GMD test cases exist that are not restricted by data confidentiality. In this paper, we outline a method to generate completely synthetic transmission system networks suitable for GMD studies. Public energy and census data form the basis for generation, load, and geographic substation placement. The transmission line topology of the synthetic network is designed to match statistical characteristics observed on the Eastern Interconnect in North America: average nodal degree, average shortest path length, and average clustering coefficient. We apply the Delaunay triangulation to transmission network synthesis, showing it provides an excellent starting place for generating realistic topologies. A 150-bus case is developed and released with benchmark GMD results, for using in testing GMD models and methods.