Power System Stability-

Power system engineering forms a vast and major portion of electrical engineering
studies. It is mainly concerned with the production of electrical power and its
transmission from the sending end to receiving end as per requirements, incurring a
minimum amount of losses. The power often changes due to the variation of load
or due to disturbances. For these reasons, the term power system stability is of
utmost importance in this field. It is used to define the ability of the system to bring
back its operation to steady state condition within a minimum possible time after
having undergone any transience or disturbance. Ever since the 20th century, till
the recent times, all major power generating stations over the globe has mainly
relied on AC system as the most effective and economical option for generation
and transmission of electrical power.

In power plants, several synchronous generators are connected to the bus having
the same frequency and phase sequence as the generators. Therefore, for a stable
operation, we have to synchronize the bus with the generators over the entire
duration of generation and transmission. For this reason, the power system
stability is also referred to as synchronous stability and is defined as the ability of
the system to return to synchronism after having undergone some disturbance due
to switching on and off of load or due to line transience. To understand, stability
well, another factor needs to be considered, and that is the stability limit of the
system. The stability limit defines the maximum power permissible to flow
through a particular part of the system for which it is subjected to line disturbances
or faulty flow of power. Having understood these terminologies related to power
system stability let us now look into the different types of stability.

The power system stability or synchronous stability of a power system can be of

several types depending upon the nature of the disturbance, and for successful
analysis, it can be classified into the following three types as shown below:

1. Steady state stability.

2. Transient stability.
3. Dynamic stability.
Steady State Stability of a Power System

The steady-state stability of a power system is defined as the ability of the system
to bring itself back to its stable configuration following a small disturbance in the
networkvoltage regulator. It can only be considered only during a very gradual and
infinitesimally small power change.

In case the power flow through the circuit exceeds the maximum power
permissible, then there are chances that a particular machine or a group of
machines will cease to operate in synchronism, and result in yet more disturbances.
In such a situation, the steady-state limit of the system is said to have reached, or in
other words, the steady state stability limit of a system refers to the maximum
amount of power that is permissible through the system without loss of its steady
state stability.

Transient Stability of a Power System

Transient stability of a power system refers to the ability of the system to reach a
stable condition following a large disturbance in the network condition. In all cases
related to large changes in the system like sudden application or removal of the
load, switching operations, line faults or loss due to excitation the transient
stability of the system comes into play. It in fact deals in the ability of the system
to retain synchronism following a disturbance sustaining for a reasonably long
period. And the maximum power that is permissible to flow through the network
without loss of stability following a sustained period of disturbance is referred to as
the transient stability of the system. Going beyond that maximum permissible
value for power flow, the system would temporarily be rendered as unstable.

Dynamic Stability of a Power System

Dynamic stability of a system denotes the artificial stability given to an inherently

unstable system by automatically controlled means. It is concerned to small
disturbances lasting for about 10 to 30 seconds.

Steady State Stability-:

It is the study which implies small and gradual variations or changes in the
working state of the system. The purpose is to determine the higher limit of loading
in the machine before going to lose the synchronism. The load is increased slowly.

The highest power which can be transferred to the receiving end of the system
without affecting the synchronism is termed as Steady State Stability limit

The Swings equation is known by

Pm → Mechanical power

Pe → Electrical power
δ → Load angle

H → Inertia constant

ωs → Synchronous speed

Consider the above system (figure above) which is operating on steady state power
transfer of

Assume the power is increased by a small amount say Δ Pe. As a result, the rotor
angle becomes

from δ0

p → frequency of oscillation.
 The characteristic equation is used to determine the system stability due to small
changes.

Conditions for System Stability

Without loss of stability, the Maximum power transfer is given by

Assume, the condition when the system is in operation with lower than the steady
state stability limit. Then, it may oscillate continuously for a lengthy time if the
damping is very low. The oscillation which persists is a hazard to system security.
The |Vt| should be kept constant for each load by adjusting the excitation. This is to
maintain the steady state stability limit.

 A system can never be operated higher than its steady state stability limit but
it can operate beyond the transient stability limit.
 By reducing the X (reactance) or by raising the |E| or by increasing the |V|,
the improvement of steady state stability limit of the system is possible.
 Two systems to improve the stability limit are quick excitation voltage and
higher excitation voltage.
 To reduce the X in the transmission line which is having high reactance, we
can employ parallel line.

Transient Stability in Power System-:

The ability of a synchronous power system to return to stable condition and
maintain its synchronism following a relatively large disturbance arising
from very general situations like switching ON and OFF of circuit elements,
or clearing of faults, etc. is referred to as the transient stability in power
system. More often than not, the power generation systems are subjected to
faults of this kind, and hence its extremely important for power engineers to
be well-versed with the stability conditions of the system.
In general practice studies related to transient stability in the power system
are done over a minimum period equal to the time required for one swing,
which approximates to around 1 sec or even less. If the system is found to be
stable during this first swing, its assumed that the disturbance will reduce in
the subsequent swings, and the system will be stable after that as is the case.
Now to mathematically determine whether a system is stable or not we need
to derive the swing equation of power system.

Swing Equation for Determining Transient Stability

In order to determine the transient stability of a power system using swing

equation, let us consider a synchronous generator supplied with input shaft
power PS producing mechanical torque equal to TS as shown in the figure
below. This makes the machine rotate at a speed of ω rad/sec and the output
electromagnetic torque and power generated on the receiving end are
expressed as TE and PE respectively. When, the synchronous generator is fed
with a supply from one end and a constant load is applied to the other, there
is some relative angular displacement between the rotor axis and the stator
magnetic field, known as the load angle δ which is directly proportional to
the loading of the machine. The machine at this instance is considered to be
running under a stable condition.
Now if we suddenly add or remove load from the machine the rotor
decelerates or accelerates accordingly with respect to the stator magnetic
field. The operating condition of the machine now becomes unstable and the
rotor is now said to be swinging w.r.t the stator field and the equation we so
obtain giving the relative motion of the load angle δ w.r.t the stator magnetic
field is known as the swing equation for transient stability of a power
system. Here for the sake of understanding, we consider the case where a
synchronous generator is suddenly applied with an increased amount of
electromagnetic load, which leads to instability by making P E less than PS as
the rotor undergoes deceleration. Now the increased amount of the
accelerating power required to bring the machine back to a stable condition
is given by,

Similarly, the accelerating torque is given by,

Now we know that

(since T = current × angular acceleration)

Furthermore, angular momentum, M = Iω

But since on loading the angular displacement θ varies continuously with

time, as shown in the figure below, we can write
 Double differentiating the above equation w.r.t time, we get

,
where angular acciletation

Thus we can write

,
Now the electromagnetic power transmitted is given by,

Thus we can write,

This is known as the swing equation for transient stability in power

system.

Equal Area Criterion for Stability

Over a lossless line, the real power transmitted will be

Consider a fault occurs in a synchronous machine which was operating in steady

state. Here, the power delivered is given by

For clearing a fault, the circuit breaker in the faulted section should have to be
opened up. This process takes 5/6 cycles and the successive post-fault transient
will take an additional few cycles.

The prime mover which is giving the input power is driven with the steam turbine.
For turbine mass system, the time constant is in the order of few seconds and for
the electrical system, it is in milliseconds. Thus, while the electric transients take
place, the mechanical power remains stable. The transient study mainly looks into
the capability of the power system to retrieve from the fault and to give the stable
power with a new probable load angle (δ).
The power angle curve is considered which is shown in fig.1. Imagine a system
delivering ‘Pm’ power on an angle of δ0 (fig.2) is working in a steady state. When a
fault occurs; the circuit breakers opened and the real power is decreased to zero.
But the Pm will be stable. As a result, accelerating power, The power
differences will result in rate of change of kinetic energy stored within the rotor
masses. Therefore, due to the stable influence of non-zero accelerating power, the
rotor will accelerate. Consequently, the load angle (δ) will increase. Now, we can
consider an angle δc at which the circuit breaker re-closes. The power will then
come back to the usual operating curve. At this moment, the electrical power will
be higher than the mechanical power. But, the accelerating power (Pa) will be
negative. Therefore, the machine will get decelerate. The load power angle will
still continue to increase because of the inertia in the rotor masses. This increase in
load power angle will stop in due course and rotor of the machine will start to
decelerate or else the synchronisation of the system will get lose.

The Swings equation is given by

Pm → Mechanical power

Pe → Electrical power

δ → Load angle
H → Inertia constant

ωs → Synchronous speed

We know that,

Putting equation (2) in equation (1), we get

Now, multiply dt to either side of equation (3) and integrate it among the two
arbitrary load angles which are δ0 and δc. Then we get,

Assume the generator is at rest when load angle is δ0.

We know that

At the time of occurrence of a fault, the machine will start to accelerate. When the
fault is cleared, it will continue to increase speed before it reaches to its peak value
(δc). At this point,

So the area of accelerating from equation (4) is

Similarly, the area of deceleration is

Next, we can assume the line to be reclosed at load angle, δ c. In this case, the area
of acceleration is bigger than area of deceleration. A1 > A2. The load angle of the
generator will pass the point δm. Beyond this point, the mechanical power is greater
than electrical power and it forces the accelerating power to remain positive.
Before slowing down, the generator therefore gets accelerate. Consequently, the
system will become unstable. When A2 > A1, the system will decelerate entirely
before getting accelerated again. Here, the rotor inertia will force the successive
acceleration and deceleration areas to become smaller than the previous ones.
Consequently, the system will reach steady state. When A2 = A1, the margin of the
stability limit is defined by this condition. Here, the clearing angle is given by δ cr,
the critical clearing angle. Since, A2 = A1. We get

The critical clearing angle is related to the equality of areas, it is termed as equal
area criterion. It can be used to find out the utmost limit on the load which the
system can acquire without crossing the stability limit.

Factors effecting transient stability:

i) Generator inertia

ii) Generator loading

iii) Generator output (power transfer) during fault-depends on fault location and
fault type

iv) Fault clearing time

v) Post-fault transmission system reactance

vi) Generator reactance

vii) Generator internal voltage magnitude-this depends on field excitation, i.e. the
power factor of the power sent at the

generator terminals

viii) Infinite bus voltage magnitude.

Transient Stability Evaluation-:

Transient stability analysis is used to investigate the stability of power system
under sudden and large disturbances, and plays an important role in maintaining
security of power system operation. The transient stability analysis is performed
by combining a solution of the algebraic equations describing the network with
numerical solution of the differential equations. However, due to the non-
linearity of the differential equations, the solving process is tedious and
complicated. Thus, numerical integration methods have been applied to examine
a system‟s stability .In order to reduce the complexity of the transient stability
analysis for the considered test systems, the following assumption are accepted
[10]:

(i) Each synchronous machine is represented by a constant voltage source

behind the direct axis transient reactance.
(ii) The governor‟s action are neglected and the input powers are assumed
to remain constant during the entire period of simulation.
(iii) Using pre-fault bus voltage, al l loads are converted to equivalent
admittances to ground and a reassumedto remain constant.
(iv) The mechanical rotor angle of each machine coincides with the angel of
the voltage behind the machine reactance.
(v) Machines belonging to the same station swing together and are said to
be coherent. A group of coherent machines is represented by one
machine.
A Solution steps:

The algorithm for the transient stability studies involves the following steps:
• Reads the line and bus data. It includes the data for lines, transformer and
shunt capacitors.
• Form admittance matrix, Ybus.
• Solve the initial load flow.
• Reads generator data.
• Modify Ybus by adding the generator and load admittances.
• Compute the pre-fault admittance matrix Ypre-fault by eliminating all
nodes except the internal generator nodes.
• Solve the generator swing equation for the pre-fault period.
• Set t = 1s a three-phase fault occurs at any line in the system, and fault bus
voltage equal to zero.
• Compute the new faulted admittance matrix Yfault.
• Solve the swing equation for the fault period.
• Isolate the line witch fault occurred.
• Compute the post-fault system admittance matrix Ypostfault.
• Solve the swing equation for the post fault period.
• Plots the swing curves for all generators. In this paper,
we define the CCT as the small lest from all CCTs values for different
generators.
A. Effect of Fault Clearing Time (FCT): In order to know the effect of Fault
Clearing Time (FCT)on transient stability a disturbance in the form of a three
phase to ground fault is occurs at t = 1 second at bus 1, cleared by opening
the line connecting the nodes 1–2. The rotor angle differences are shown in
Figure 2. If the fault is cleared rapidly the angular deviation is less and
subsequently the system may become stable. This angular deviation
increases if the fault clearing time increases and ultimately if the fault is
cleared after Critical Clearing Time (CCT) the system will lose synchronism.
In this case the CCT is equal to 166 ms
 B. Effect of fault location: In this sub-section the effects of fault location
in transient stability are analyzed. A three-phase fault is located at two
different locations, one closer to the generating stations (at bus1 with
opening the line 1–2), in this case the CCT is equal to166 ms (Fig. 1), the
other one far from the generating stations(at bus 6 with opening the line 4–
6). Fig. 3 shows the angular positions of the machines in the system for a
fault on line 4–6. It is found that the CCT is equal to 620 ms
C. Effect of load increasing: The man objective of this sub-section is to
know the impact of load increasing on the power system Critical Clearing
Time. For this reason, active load at all buses in the IEEE 30-bussystem are
increased from base case by 10%, 20%, 30%, and40%. Real example of this
case is electrical peak load of energy consumption. It is observed that more
than allowed level of load increasing, power generation increased and
voltage at all buses dropped.

Dynamics of a Synchronous Machine:

Dynamics of a Synchronous Machine

– kinetic energy of the rotor at synchronous machine is

where

But

where
where

We shall define the inertia constant H such that

where

It immediately follows that

M is also called the inertia constant.

Taking G as base, the inertia constant in pu is

The inertia constant H has a characteristic value or a range of values for each class
of machines. Table 12.1 lists some typical inertia constants.

It is observed from Table 12.1 that the value of H is considerably higher for steam
turbogenerator than for water wheel generator. Thirty to sixty per cent of the total
inertia of a steam turbogenerator unit is that of the prime mover, whereas only 4 —
15% of the inertia of a hydroelectric generating unit is that of the waterwheel,
including water.

The Swing Equation

Figure 12.1 shows the torque, speed and flow of mechanical and electrical powers
in a synchronous machine. It is assumed that the windage, friction and iron-loss
torque is negligible. The differential equation governing the rotor dynamics can
then be written as
where

θm = angle in rad (mech)

Tm = turbine torque in Nm; it acquires a negative value for a motoring machine

Te = electromagnetic torque developed in Nm; it acquires negative value for a

motoring machine

While the rotor undergoes dynamics as per Eq. (12.3), the rotor speed changes by
insignificant magnitude for the time period of interest (1s) [Sec. 12.1]. Equation
(12.3) can therefore be converted into its more convenient power form by
assuming the rotor speed to remain constant at the synchronous speed (ωsm).
Multiplying both sides of Eq. (12.3) by ωsm′ we can write

where

Pm = mechanical power input in MW

Pe = electrical power output in MW; stator copper loss is assumed negligible.

Rewriting Eq. (12.4)

where

It is more convenient to measure the angular position of the rotor with respect to a
synchronously rotating frame of reference. Let

δ=θe-ωst; rotor angular displacement from synchronously rotating reference frame

(called torque angle/power angle) (12.6)

From Eq. (12.6)

Hence Eq. (12.5) can be written in terms of δ as d 6

With M as defined in Eq. (12.1), we can write

Dividing throughout by G, the MVA rating of the machine,

where

This equation (Eq. (12.10)/Eq. (12.11)), is called the swing equation and it
describes the rotor dynamics for a synchronous machine (generating/motoring). It
is .a second-order differential equation where the damping term (proportional to
dδ/dt) is absent because of the assumption of a lossless machine and the fact that
the torque of damper winding has been ignored. This assumption leads to
pessimistic results in transient stability analysis—damping helps to stabilize the
system. Damping must of course be considered in a dynamic stability study. Since
the electrical power Pe depends upon the sine of angle δ (see Eq. (12.29)), the
swing equation is a non-linear second-order differential equation.

Multimachine System

In a multimachine system a common system base must be chosen. Let

Equation (12.11) can then be written as

where

Machines Swinging Coherently

Consider the swing equations of two machines on a common system base.

Since the machine rotors swing together (coherently or in unison)

Adding Eqs (12.14) and (12.15)

where

The two machines swinging coherently are thus reduced to a single machine as in
Eq. (12.16). The equivalent inertia in Eq. (12.17) can be written as
The above results are easily extendable to any number of machines swinging
coherently.