Continuous-time echo state networks for predicting power system dynamics

With the growing penetration of converter-interfaced generation in power systems, the dynamical behavior of these systems is rapidly evolving. One of the challenges with converter-interfaced generation is the increased number of equations, as well as the required numerical timestep, involved in simulating these systems. Within this work, we explore the use of continuous-time echo state networks as a means to cheaply, and accurately, predict the dynamic response of power systems subject to a disturbance for varying system parameters. We show an application for predicting frequency dynamics following a loss of generation for varying penetrations of grid-following and grid-forming converters. We demonstrate that, after training on 20 solutions of the full-order system, we achieve a median nadir prediction error of 0.17 mHz with 95% of all nadir prediction errors within ±4 mHz. We conclude with some discussion on how this approach can be used for parameter sensitivity analysis and within optimization algorithms to rapidly predict the dynamical behavior of the system.