The EARNEST Consortium, sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), is dedicated to identifying and advancing solutions for the future of the U.S. electricity system. As part of its public engagement efforts, EARNEST is hosting its first webinar series focused on “U.S. Grid Reliability and Resilience.” This eighth session led by Professor Mani V. Venkatasubramanian (Washington State University) will examine how the increasing adoption of inverter-based resources (IBRs) is reshaping the dynamics of power systems and influencing both reliability and resilience.

As power grids worldwide integrate more IBRs, new challenges are emerging. These include frequency instabilities, oscillations, and voltage control issues that can compromise grid performance. Understanding how IBRs affect stability is essential, particularly as communication delays between plant-level and inverter-level controls, along with sampling effects, have been identified as significant contributors to problematic oscillations.

This session will explore the implications of these dynamics, focusing on how communication delays and sampling rates of control signals influence the stability of grid-following IBR plants. The findings highlight the unique effects of these factors on IBR-rich power systems and point toward strategies to mitigate their detrimental impacts.