Microseismic Concentration Zones before and after the February 12,2014 M_S 7.3 Yutian Earthquake and the Possible Indication of an Earthquake Risk Zone

Since 2001, there have occurred in succession the 2001 Kunlun Mountains M S8. 1earthquake,the 2008 Wenchuan M S8. 0 earthquake,the 2010 Yushu M S7. 1 earthquake and the 2012 Lushan M S7. 0 earthquake in the periphery of the Bayan Har block. By comparison of the characteristics of seismic strain release variations before and after the Kunlun Mountains M S8. 1 earthquake in the same time length in the geodynamical related regions,we found that the seismic strain release was obviously enhanced after the earthquake in the Longmenshan area,Batang area,and the NS-trending valleys at the west of the Hot Spring Basin. The Wenchuan earthquake occurred in the first area,and the Yushu earthquake is related to the second area. After the earthquake rupture occurred on the East Kunlun fault zone on the northern boundary of the Bayan Har Block,crustal materials on the south side of the fault zone migrated to the southeast,leading to a concentration of tectonic deformation in the Longmenshan thrust belt, e ventually rupturing on the Longmenshan thrust belt. This earthquake case illustrates that seismicity enhancement zones are possibly prone to long-term destructive earthquakes. After the M S7. 3 earthquake in Yutian,Xinjiang on February 12,2014,earthquake frequency and seismic strain release markedly increased in the junction area between the eastern Qilian Mountain tectonic belt and the Altun Tagh fault zone,where more attention should be paid to the long-term seismic risk.

Zone 3 Relay Blocking Scheme to Prevent Cascaded Events

Defense systems are needed to prevent catastrophic failures of a power grid due to cascaded events. Cascaded events can be attributed to improper operations of protective relays. The most challenging problem for the design and implementation of a defense system is the performance in accuracy and speed in a real time environment. Protective devices are normally designed to operate fast in order to isolate the fault（s）. This paper proposes a new methodology to distinguish line overloads from actual faults for distance relays. In order to distinguish between line flow transfers from a line outage and an actual fault, the line outage distribution factor （LQDF） and generation shift factor （GSF） based power flow estimation method, and a secure peer to peer （P2P） communication structure are adopted. Computer simulations of cascaded events for a 6-bus system and the Korean power grid have been performed to establish the feasibility of the proposed scheme.

Reliable Remote Relay Protection in Smart Grid

As the false trips of remote protection relays are among the main reasons behind cascading blackouts, it is critical to design reliable relay protection. Even though common protection schemes on traditional power systems have been investigated for a few decades, cascading failures in recent years indicate more research needed in this area. Consequently, researchers have proposed agent-based methods on the Smart Grid （SG） to address this issue. However, these existing agent-based methods simply use TCP protocol without considering real-time communication requirements （such as bandwidth and delay）. To deal with this issue, several methods for efficient network resource management are proposed. Furthermore, these existing methods do not consider the potential issues in practical communication networks, which may result in delay violation and trigger relay false trips. We have discussed simple backup solutions in the previous work. In this paper, in addition to network efficiency, we focus on improving the system reliability by exploring known power system information and minimizing the chances of false trips of important remote relays, e.g., defining power line priorities based on their importance. Moreover, to further improve the. system reliability, we also in- vestigate the peer-to-peer protection approaches to address the single point of failure of centralized control center.

Analysis of Dynamic Variations of Crustal Density in the Longmenshan Area before the Wenchuan M_S8.0 Earthquake

Based on the repeated gravity observation data from 1996 to 2007 from the Longmenshan gravity network, which has been dealt with by adjustment processing, the benchmark interference removal and impact of elevation changes removal, and by using the 3-D inversion method to reflect underground density, we analyze the characteristics of Longmenshan regional dynamic crustal density at depths of 25km, 20km and 15kin. The results show that in the Wenchuan earthquake preparation process, the regional density field showed marked characteristics both in time and space distribution. From the point of time process, the density change trend in the ten years before the earthquake presents a periodic change pattern： steady phase, dramatic stage, slow reducing phase and slow increase phase. The degree of density changes is from large to small, which means that earthquake gestation has reached the final stage. From the point of space distribution, density change distribution has a tendency of ＂dispersion--relative concentration＂, this shows that before the earthquake, the entropy of the underground density field was decreased. In addition, dramatic density changes often occur in the Longmenshan fault zone and western Sichuan plateau. Also, with the increase of depth, the trend of density change is more and more obvious. Through comparative analysis, the influence of density change on gravity is much bigger than that from height change.

Preventing False Trips of Zone 3 Protection Relays in Smart Grid

While remote zone 3 protection relays are essential to power systems, their false trips are also one of main causes related to cascading blackouts. Although many methods have been developed on traditional power systems to address this issue, the past cascading failure events showed the ineffectiveness of these methods. With the development of Smart Grid （SG）, new agent-based methods have been proposed to address this issue by utilizing SG real-time communications. We found that these solutions simply assume ideal communication networks and do not consider the effect of practical network constraints and resource management. In this paper, we propose several solutions to address practical network resource management and constraints, and further improve the agent-based solutions in order to prevent the false tripping of zone 3 relays in various conditions. We also analyze the potential issues of these solutions, and point out the future investigation in this direction.

Joint creation of a demonstration zone for China-UK cooperation 3rd China-UK Regional Leaders Summit held in Northern Ireland

The Third China-UK Regional Leaders Summit—themed'China-UK Industrial Area Cooperation'—was co-hosted by the CPAFFC and the Northern Ireland government in the capital city of Belfast from Dec 1 to 3,2017,as a supplementary activity of the fifth meeting of China-UK High Level People-to-People Dialogue.Attending the event were CPAFFC Vice-President Song Jingwu;