Macroscopic modeling of large power systems using distributed dynamic measurements with dependence on network topology

Wide-area analysis and control of large-scale electric power systems are highly dependent on the idea of aggregation. For example, one often hears power system operators mentioning how `Northern Washington´ oscillates against `Southern California´ in response to various disturbance events. The main question here is whether we can analytically construct dynamic electro-mechanical models for these conceptual, aggregated generators representing Washington and California, which in reality are some hypothetical combinations of thousands of actual generators. We address this problem in this paper and present several new results on how to construct simplified macroscopic models of large power networks by using dynamic measurements available from specific points on the network edges. Our examples of study are motivated by widely encountered power transfer paths in the US west coast power system, namely, a two-node radial network and a star-connected three-node system.