New Centralized Adaptive Under Frequency
Load Shedding Algorithms
M. Sanaye Pasand, Senior Member, IEEE and H. Seyedi
Abstract-- In this paper two centralized adaptive Under
Frequency Load Shedding algorithms are proposed and
analyzed. The objective of these methods is to simultaneously
protect power systems against frequency instability as well as
voltage instability, following combinational disturbances. After
some events in power systems frequency starts to recover, while
the system collapses due to voltage instability. This situation may
occur due to high dependence of loads upon voltage, low
frequency settings of under frequency relays, slow operation of
under frequency relays and inappropriate selection of either
amount or location of loads to be shed by conventional UFLS
relays. The load shedding algorithms of this paper attempt to
overcome the above mentioned shortcomings of conventional
UFLS method. Performances of the proposed algorithms are
evaluated by application of adaptive algorithms to the distributed
and dynamic simulated model of a real power system test case.
Index Terms Adaptive UFLS, Centralized UFLS, Voltage
stability.
I. INTRODUCTION
O NE of the major challenges of electric utilities in recent
years is power system blackout. For instance the
blackouts of Greece, Italy, North America, Sweden and
Denmark, Iran and many others have been mentioned in the
literature [1]-[5]. In fact, due to both economical and
technological restrictions, it is not possible to completely
prevent these blackouts. However, with the aid of some
protection and control strategies, frequency and severity of
these blackouts may be reduced [6]. One of the important
protection strategies used for this purpose is a class of
protection schemes known as System Protection Schemes
[7],[8].
System protection schemes are protection strategies designed
to detect a particular system condition that is known to cause
unusual stress to the power system, and to take some kind of
predetermined action to counteract the observed condition in a
controlled manner [9]. One of the most commonly used types
of system protection schemes, generally accepted after the
northeastern blackout of 1965, is Under Frequency Load
Shedding (UFLS) scheme [10].
Conventional UFLS system is designed to recover the balance
of generation and consumption following a generator outage
Majid Sanaye Pasand (msanaye@ut.ac.ir) and Heresh Seyedi
(hereshseyedi@yahoo.com) are with the School of ECE, University of
Tehran, Iran.
978-1-4244-1583-0/07/$25.00 2007 IEEE
44
or sudden load increase. The loads to be shed by this system
are constant load feeders and are not selected adaptively. In
other words always the same loads are dropped from the
system, regardless of the location of disturbance. In this
method loads are classified in three groups of non-vital, semi-
vital and vital loads [11]. The trend is to shed non-vital loads.
However in severe conditions semi-vital loads may also be
shed. Obviously this constant non-adaptive load shed scheme
is not the most efficient one and may cause some problems in
the system. As an example, outage of a major generating unit
in the power system may cause transfer of high amount of
power in long distances which can reduce voltage stability
margin of the system. In this situation occurrence of another
contingency may cause voltage instability, though the system
is stable in terms of frequency. After occurrence of the system
disturbance, frequency initially decreases and then it might
return back to its near normal value, but system might become
unstable due to voltage problem. The return of frequency is
due to load dependency on voltage and frequency. Therefore,
modeling the dependency of load upon voltage and frequency
is of essential importance. In this research work this
dependency has been considered using appropriate load
models.
Conventional UFLS schemes are generally implemented in a
decentralized, i.e. distributed, protection system. In this
approach the decision to shed load is made using the local
frequencies measured at the location of relays. However, in
recent years, application of centralized load shedding
algorithms to enhance adaptability of the schemes has been
proposed in some publications [12].
In one of the algorithms, proposed in the present paper, the
method of [12] is used to calculate the amount of imbalance
between generation and load. However in the present work a
new approach is proposed to select the loads that must be
shed. Another advantage of this algorithm, compared with that
of [12], is that in this approach time delay and frequency
settings of the load shedding system is a function of df/dt. This
way the load shedding algorithm is adapted to the intensity of
disturbance. This system could help preserve integrity of the
system after extremely large disturbances.
In the second algorithm of this work, instead of the method of
[12], an event based method is used to calculate the amount of
imbalance between generation and consumption.
The two proposed algorithms are tested on the simulated
model of Khorasan network, one of the important utilities in
the Iranian interconnected grid.
 II. CENTRALIZED ADAPTIVE UFLS SCHEMES
In this section two centralized adaptive UFLS algorithms are
proposed. The first algorithm is response-based while the
second is a combination of event-based and response-based
methods.
It is worth mentioning that in response based system
protection schemes, response of the system to disturbances is
used in decision making. Input signals of the system in this
method may be voltage, frequency or any other signal of the
system. Under frequency load shedding and under voltage
load shedding schemes are popular methods in this class. On
the other hand in event based method decision is based on the
state of specific elements in the system such as important
transmission lines or generators. This method usually requires
a communication link to transmit the state of important
elements to the control center and under frequency relays. For
example one of the methods proposed in this work is partially
event based. In this method UFLS scheme is based on the
outage of generators. Whenever a generator is tripped a signal
is transmitted to the control center. The decision making
system in the control center determines the amount of load to
be shed based on the location of the tripped generator. The
In the following two subsections centralized adaptive
UFLS algorithms of this work are introduced.
A. The Completely Response Based Method
In this method the algorithm proposed in [12] is used to
estimate the magnitude of disturbance, i.e. the imbalance
between generation and consumption. In this algorithm the
swing equations of all generators are used to estimate the
magnitude of disturbance. For this purpose the ith generator
( i=1N, where N is the number of generators ) swing
equation is written as follows:
2H i df i
= Pm i Pe i = Pi
f n dt (1)
where Pmi is the mechanical turbine power in pu, Pei is the
electrical power in pu, Pi is the imbalance between
generation and consumption in pu, Hi is the inertia constant in
seconds, fi is the frequency in Hz, and fn is its rated value. By
adding swing equations for all generators of the system the
following equation is obtained for the total imbalance: [12]
N

algorithm could be extended for outage of tie lines as well. N

2 H i
df c df
[13] P = Pi = i =1
= c
The main features of the proposed methods of this paper i =1 fn dt dt (2)
which distinguish them from conventional method are as the where
following: N N
1) The methods are centralized, therefore there may be fc = Hifi H i
various useful parameters available in the decision i =1 i =1 , (3)
making process. N
2
2) In these methods, in contrast to the conventional
method, voltage of sub-transmission buses has a very
=
fn
H
i =1
i
(4)
important role in the load shedding system, although
there is no need to transmit the measured voltage of fc is the frequency of the equivalent inertial center. Using
busbars to the control center. This way the load the above equations, magnitude of the disturbance is
shedding scheme is sensitive to both frequency and estimated. This value may be used by the UFLS system to
voltage. This characteristic enables the load shed determine the amount of load that must be shed. In order to
scheme to prevent voltage collapse as well as calculate P the estimated values of df/dt at the generator
frequency instability in numerous cases. terminals must be transmitted to the control center.
3) Intelligent selection of loads to be shed is another In this paper a centralized UFLS algorithm, based on the
important feature of the proposed methods. In these above principles, is proposed. This method includes 13 steps:
algorithms loads to be shed are connected to the 1) The first step is to rank all sub-transmission buses of the
buses with low voltages and low voltage stability VQ system in the control center according to their VQ margins.
margins. This characteristic has the highest impact on This ranking may be updated every 10-15 minutes according
the robustness of these methods during combinational to the updated topology of the system.
disturbances. 2) In each sub-transmission substation of the system the
4) In the proposed methods the amount of load to be voltage is measured by voltage transformers. According to the
shed is determined adaptively and it is completely magnitude of positive sequence voltage one of the following
proportional to the magnitude of disturbance. This signals is transmitted to the control center. In (5) ftr is
way the problems of under-shedding and over- frequency of the transmitted signal through the channel.
shedding existing in the conventional UFLS method
are overcome. f 1 if V 0.8
f 2 if 0.8 < V < 0.85
5) In the adaptive methods of this work, frequency
settings and time delay settings are selected f tr =
f 3 if 0.85 V < 0.9
adaptively according to the magnitude of disturbance.
For large disturbances, high frequency settings and
f 4 if V 0.9 (5)
minimum possible time delays are used. This way a This way the control center is aware of the magnitude of
fast response is obtained for large disturbances and, voltage in each sub-transmission bus of the system.
as the results of simulations verify, several voltage 3) Using (5) whenever voltage of a bus falls below 0.8 pu
collapses may be prevented.

45
for a period of 0.2 s load of that bus will be dropped. Since
this step is independent of frequency, to avoid overfrequency,
maximum permissible amount of load to be shed in this step
must be limited between 10-15 percent of total load. If
candidate loads to be shed exceed the limit the priority is
given to the loads with low VQ margins, according to the
ranking of step 1.
4) Calculation of frequency and its rate of change at the
terminals of all generators of the system.
5) Transmitting the calculated parameters of step 4 to the
control center through a high speed communication link.
6) Calculation of P, fc and dfc/dt in the control center,
according to (2)-(4).
7) If P exceeds a threshold value, part of system load
must be shed. The threshold value ( Pthr ) is the maximum
amount of imbalance between generation and load for which
frequency does not reach a specified value, for instance 49 Hz
in the 50 Hz systems. This value is 350 MW for the simulated
system of this work. The amount of load to be shed is
calculated using (6).
Pshed = 1.05 * (P Pthr )
(6)
Following a generator outage the system rapidly encounters
voltage decline and, due dependence of loads upon voltage,
total system load is suddenly decreased. Therefore the value of
P, calculated by (2), would be less than active power of the
tripped generator. In order to compensate for this, and other
uncertainties in modeling, the right side of (6) has been
multiplied by 1.05.
8) In this step the loads to be shed are selected. The first
candidates to be shed are the loads which their buses have
voltages between 0.8 and 0.85. If the amount of load shedding
would exceed Pshed, calculated by (6), then the priority is given
to the buses with low VQ margins according to the ranking of
step 1.
9) If the amount of load to be shed by the criterion of step 8
is less than Pshed the loads with bus voltages between 0.85 and
0.9 are the next candidates. Again if the amount of load
shedding would exceed Pshed, the priority is given to the buses
with low VQ margins in the ranking of step 1.
10) If the amount of load to be shed by the criteria of steps
8 and 9 is still less than Pshed the remaining required loads to
be shed are selected among the loads with low VQ margins of
step 1.
11) In order to avoid over-shedding and overfrequency
problems, if during 1 second before a generator or tie line
outage some loads had been shed by step 3, these loads would
be considered in load shedding.
12) After the loads to be shed are selected if |dfc/dt| is less
than a certain value, related to large disturbances, frequency
and time delays settings are similar to the conventional
scheme.
13) If |dfc/dt| is so large that the event is considered to be a
large disturbance all selected loads will be shed in one step
without any intentional delay and with a higher frequency
setting compared with the first step of the conventional
method. It speeds up the necessary load shed operation and
prevents probable system instability due to delays associated
46
with the conventional load shed scheme. This is particularly
important for major disturbances such as outage of important
tie lines or complete outage of a power plant including many
generating units. For such cases, although the conventional
load shed scheme might operate and disconnect the selected
loads in a sequence one after another, but the system could
become eventually unstable due to late response of the load
shed scheme. Detailed description about setting UFLS
parameters using df/dt may be found in [14],[15].
B. Combination of Event Based and Response Based Methods
This algorithm is similar to A except for the methods of
calculating P and Pshed. In this method instead of using (2)
for calculation of P, an event based method is used. In this
algorithm when a generator is tripped, a signal is sent to the
control center instantly, so it is known which generator is
tripped and what amount of generation is reduced. This is also
correct for tie line outages. The required amount of load to be
shed could be determined considering the amount of
generation outage and also the permissible system frequency
decline. The 13 steps of A are also applicable to this algorithm
and there is no difference between the algorithms in this
regard, except for step 7. In the latter method the revised form
of (9) is used to calculate Pshed according to (7).
Pshed = P Pthr (7)
Since in this method the value of P is directly achieved, it
is generally greater than the value calculated by (5). Therefore,
in order to perform the load shedding more optimally and to
avoid overfrequency, there is no need to multiply the right side
of (7) by 1.05.
III. MODELING A TEST SYSTEM
In order to test the performance of the proposed load
shedding algorithm the HV network of Khorasan province in
Iran is simulated in a power system analysis tool. The
Khorasan province network is a grid with seventy two 132 kV
and 400 kV buses. This network is connected to the main grid
through a 400 kV tie line. Total load of this system is about
2500 MW and its single line diagram is depicted in Fig. 1.
The following models are used for power system
components of the simulated network:
1. The fourth order model is used for system generators in
this study [16], [17].
2. The simplified governor model of [17] is used.
3. The IEEE type DC1 model is used for AVR modeling
[16], [17].
4. The EPRI load model is used for loads [16]. In this
model dependence of loads upon voltage and frequency
is considered.
Conventional UFLS scheme is designed using the method
of [18].
 fc
50.1
fc Conventional
50 fc Centralized

49.9

frequency (Hz)
49.8

49.7

49.6

49.5

49.4

49.3
0 20 40 60 80 100 120 140 160
time (cycles)

Fig. 2: fc for event 1.

SahlAbad_132
Voltage (Voltage (per unit))
Gholaman_132
1.2 (Voltage (per unit))
Ferdos_132
(Voltage (per unit))
1 Pardis_132
(Voltage (per unit))
Salehabd_132
(Voltage (per unit))
0.8

Voltage (P.U.)
Jlgerokh_132
(Voltage (per unit))
Bardskn_132
0.6 (Voltage (per unit))
Dargaz_132
(Voltage (per unit))
0.4 SangBast_132
(Voltage (per unit))
Istghazd_132
(Voltage (per unit))
0.2 Khjrabi_132
(Voltage (per unit))
Mehrgan_132
0 (Voltage (per unit))
Sabzvar_132
0 20 40 60 80 100 120 140 160 (Voltage (per unit))
time (Cycles) Abusaid_132
(Voltage (per unit))

Fig. 3: Voltages of some busbars for event 1 and conventional method.

SahlAbad_132
Voltage (Voltage (per unit))
1.2 Gholaman_132
(Voltage (per unit))
Ferdos_132
(Voltage (per unit))
1 Pardis_132
(Voltage (per unit))
Salehabd_132
0.8 (Voltage (per unit))
Voltage (P.U.)

Jlgerokh_132
(Voltage (per unit))
0.6 Bardskn_132
(Voltage (per unit))
Dargaz_132
(Voltage (per unit))
0.4 SangBast_132
(Voltage (per unit))
Fig. 1: Single line diagram of Khorasan province network. Istghazd_132
0.2 (Voltage (per unit))
Khjrabi_132
(Voltage (per unit))

IV. RESULTS OF SIMULATIONS 0 Mehrgan_132

(Voltage (per unit))
0 50 100 150 200 Sabzvar_132

In this section two disturbances are applied to the simulated
system. Performances of the conventional and proposed
centralized adaptive UFLS systems following the disturbances
are analyzed.
A. Event1: Outage of Gas Units of Neyshaboor Plant
The first event is outage of gas units of Neyshaboor power
plant with 390 MW generation. For this event, since the
amount of generation outage is not so large and also the
system load decreases due to voltage decline, the conventional
UFLS relays do not operate and the system collapses due to
voltage instability. However operation of both centralized
methods prevents voltage collapse. This operation is due to
under voltage load shedding by step 3 of section II.A. The
amount of load shed by the centralized methods is 200 MW.
Fig. 2 shows frequency of the equivalent inertial center ( fc )
for this event and different load shedding algorithms. Figs. 3
and 4 depict voltages of several busbars for conventional and
centralized methods respectively. Since in this event operation
of the centralized methods is performed by under voltage
units, responses of the two centralized methods are identical.
time (Cycles)
(Voltage (per unit))
Abusaid_132
(Voltage (per unit))
Fig. 4: Voltages of some busbars for event 1 and centralized methods.
B. Event2: Outage of Toos-Neyshaboor 400 kV line plus
outage of Toos power plant
In this case at first Toos-Neyshaboor 400 kV line is tripped
due to a fault at the middle of the line. After 500 ms Toos
power plant is disconnected from the system. Again the
conventional method is not able to protect the system and
voltage collapse occurs.
The first centralized method is also not capable of
protecting the system in view of the fact that after occurrence
of the fault, as depicted in Fig.5, an abrupt change is observed
in the value of P. This sudden change may be the
consequence of closeness of the fault to major power plants of
the system i.e. Toos and Neyshaboor power plants. The
amount of load to be shed calculated by (6) is about 1500
MW. Shedding this amount of load, the system will
experience cascading outage of generators due to
overfrequency.

47
 P algorithm is generally less than conventional scheme.
500
0
0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70
-500
P (MW)
-1000
-1500
-2000
time (Cycles)
Fig. 5: P for event 2 and the first centralized method.
The second centralized method is not affected by the
transmission line fault and effectively recovers system
frequency and voltages.
C. Discussion
The following points are deduced from the case studies:
1) In both simulated cases conventional UFLS algorithm is
not capable of preserving system stability. This may be the
consequence of its late response due to relatively low
frequency settings and high intentional time delays.
2) Another important shortcoming of the conventional
method that seriously reduces the efficiency of this algorithm
is the unintelligent selection of loads to be shed. In this
method UFLS relays are installed in substations with low
degree of importance, mostly from the social or political
points of view. However if the load shedding is performed in
the areas suffering from low voltage several voltage collapses
may be prevented, as simulated cases of this work validate this
fact.
3) Although equation (2) seems to calculate the amount of
imbalance between generation and consumption accurately, it
has an important drawback which has not been considered in
[12]. When location of a fault is close to large generators of
the system equation (2) may improperly result in considerable
value of P. This may consequently direct the system to
overshedding and overfrequency problems.
4) In the second centralized method the problem of
incorrect estimation of P is resolved by using the trip signal
of the disconnected generator which is quickly transmitted to
the control center.
V. CONCLUSION
In this paper two centralized adaptive UFLS schemes were
proposed. The objective is to protect system stability and
prevent voltage collapse for major system disturbances or
occurrence of subsequent events after the initial disturbance.
The proposed centralized algorithms select the loads to be
shed based on the magnitude of sub-transmission bus voltages
and also static voltage stability VQ margins of the buses. The
proposed methods were applied to the simulated model of a
real test system using distributed and dynamic modeling of the
system. The results of simulations show that the second
centralized approach proposed in this work is capable of
efficiently preserve system stability following severe
disturbances while the amount of load to be shed by this
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VII. BIOGRAPHIES
Majid Sanaye-Pasand, graduated in electrical engineering in 1988, Tehran,
Iran, and received his M.Sc. and Ph.D. in 1994 and 1998, Calgary, Canada,
respectively. His areas of interest include power system analysis and control,
digital protective relays and application of AI. He is at present an associate
professor at University of Tehran.
Heresh Seyedi, is a Ph.D. student at the school of Electrical and Computer
Engineering, University of Tehran, Iran and currently a visiting scholar at the
University of Waterloo, Ontario, Canada. He graduated in electrical
engineering in 2001 and received his M.Sc in 2003, university of Tehran, Iran.
His areas of interest include power system analysis, power system protection,
transmission line switching transients.
48