Nonstandard power grid frequency statistics across continents

Power-grid frequency reflects the balance between electricity supply and demand in a power system. Measuring the frequency and its variations allows monitoring of the power balance in the system and, thus, frequency grid stability. Gaining insight into the characteristics of frequency variations and defining precise evaluation metrics for these variations enable better assessment of the performance of forecasts and synthetic models of the power-grid frequency. Previous work on the power grid frequency analysis was limited to a few geographical regions and did not quantify the observed effects. In the present contribution, we analyze and quantify the statistical and stochastic properties of self-recorded power-grid frequency data from various synchronous areas in Asia, Australia, and Europe at a sampling resolution of one second. Revealing non-standard statistics of both empirical and synthetic frequency data, we effectively constrain the space of possible (stochastic) power-grid frequency models and share a range of analysis tools to benchmark any model or characterize empirical data. Furthermore, we emphasize the need to analyze data from a large range of synchronous areas to obtain generally applicable models.