Determination of the N-1 security maximum transfer capability
through power corridors
A.Berizzi, M.Merlo, Y.G.Zeng P.Marannino
Dipanmento di Elettrotecnica Dipartmento di lngegnena Elettnca
Polirecnico di Milano Univenith di P m a
Abstract: The increase in power transfer among areas of
interconnected systems and the reduction of reactive power reserves
together with the competition in the electncity markets, force system
operators and planners to look at the determination of the available
transfer capability (ATC) of the system in a new perspective. In
particular, a (N-1)security approach should be adopted in the
determination of the ATC.
In this paper, second order information derived from the Singular
Value Decomposition of the load flow (LF) Jacobian matrix is
combined with an iterative procedure in order to obtain a suitable
estimation of the ATC by means of a linear programming procedure.
The effectiveness of the presented approach is supported by the
tests on the IEEE 73 buses reliability test system and on the Italian
EHV transmission system.
Keywords: Voltage Collapse, Power System Security, Singular
Value Decomposition. Available Transfer Capability.
I. INTRODUCTION
Recently, due to the introduction of the competition in the
electricity market, transmission grids are operated close to
their limits. The increase in power transfer among areas of
interconnected systems and the reduction of the reactive power
reserves on generation units are stimulating system operators
and planners to consider the problem of the security also from
the voltage/reactive point of view [1][2][3]. As a consequence.
the contingency analysis is no more limited to the assessment
of the current overloads on the transmission equipment but it
is extended to the investigation on the practicability of the
voltage profiles in the post contingency states. Voltage
collapse constraints are frequently included in the optimisation
procedures suited for the operation of modern power systems
I41M
An on-line Dynamic Security Assessment function is on
the way of being included in the improved EMS of ENEL to
be run after a fast contingency screening algorithm. Its main
goal is to determine the risk of voltage collapse following
foreseeable dangerous contingencies. For this purpose ENEL,
0-7803-5935-6/10.00 (c) 2000 IEEE 1739
P.A.Scarpellini
ENEL SRllPEA
Cologno M o n w e
Italy
with the help of the University of Pavia and the Politecnico di
Milano, developed the procedure VOSTA [3]. It is based on
sensitivities of the maximum singular value of the inverted
Jacobian J of the LF equations. VOSTA is used to rank and
quantify the risk of voltage collapse following a branch
contingency. The maximum loadability and the quantification
of the risk of a contingency are assessed by means of quam
linear indices, that allow the determination of the critical pre-
contingency power flow in the branches and/or of their critical
admittance. The procedures and the proposed indices can be
used both in extended real time environment and in operation
planning to improve the security degree of the system,
VOSTA makes use of fictitious real and reactive power
injections [3] in the considered branch terminals that are
suitably modified to simulate the trip of this branch for
different values of the power flows. The adoption of this
technique leads to an important change in the network
structure, but the modification of the injections only in the
terminal buses of the tripped lines does not take into account
the realistic distribution of the power flows attainable with the
available control actions. Namely, i n the actual system. a
change in the power flow of a critical branch influences also
the branches close to this branch; in particular, it is necessaq
to take into account that a set of control actions to reduce ths
power flow in a critical branch results in a subsequent
beneficial decreasing of the flows in the existing parallel
branches. The use of fictitious injections can cause therefore
over conservative estimates of the maximum allowable
"secure" pre-contingency power flows in the critical lines.
To extend the capability of VOSTA, a more practical and
useful approach has been adopted. It allows the computation
of more significant critical power flows in a branch or in a
defined corridor and of the control actions allowed to system
operators for the satisfaction of the operating constraints. Thz
new procedure gives the system operators information on
control actions (power generation rescheduling or load
shedding) suitable to bring the power flows in the detected
critical branches below the maximum values pertinent to the
risk of the voltage collapse.
A constrained linear programming procedure makes it
possible, by using the sensitivities of the power flows in thz
branches with respect to the real power generations and the
real loads in the systems. An iterative procedure determines
the rescheduling actions on the real power generations that
bring the power flows in the critical branches or in a defined
power corridor to values that guarantee the existence of the LF
 solution for the network in the contingency case. In this way,
the maximum pre-contingency "secure" power flow is
obtained for the considered line, transformer or corridor.
The approach has been developed in order to find a N-1
secure operating condition for all the power system branches
at the same time.
If it is not possible to find a feasible solution only by
rescheduling the power generations, a minimum load shedding
strategy is activated.
Some comparisons with the results obtained with the
fictitious power injections technique are shown on the IEEE
Three Area Reliability Test System and on the Italian EHV
transmission system.
11. THE PROCEDURE VOSTA
adopted to calculate the critical power flow [3]: a) an iterative
procedure, based on the fictitious injection method, and b) a
quasi linear index i ,proportional to the branch
power flow margin [.
In the iterative procedure, the real and reactive power
flows in the branch i-j at the current operating point are
converted in two power injections at the two terminal buses i
and j and the branch is removed (Fig.1). This case is
equivalent to the pre-contingency situation. Then. the
injections are gradually reduced until a non convergent LF is
detected.

In [6][7][8][9],some useful applications of the sensitivities

of the maximum singular value of J" with respect to some
system parameters (power productions, terminal voltage of
generators, tap-changers, load shedding etc.) are described.
These sensitivities hold second order information, because
they are calculated using the Hessian of the LF equations.
Moreover, they allow a reliable estimate of the system
behaviour, even if the simulated perturbation implies
discontinuity in the system parameters (attainment of
generator limits, tap-changer movements and so on). In
[3](4][ 101 the authors show the possibility of using the above
second order information to study the contingency ranking
problem from the reactive point of view.
The severity assessment is performed by VOSTA in two
steps: ranking and quantification of the voltage collapse risk
[3]. The ranking takes place making use of the sensitivities of
the maximum singular value om, of the inverted Jacobian and
assuming that the severity of the contingency is proportional
to the variation of emu:
-
Fig. I Model for the contingency severit) evaluation.
Using the linear index method b), two LF computations are
necessary to determine the unknown critical value of PI, that
corresponds to ip=O (Fig.2). When the pre-contingency power
flow is below the critical value (the contingency i-j is not
critical), the system operator gets useful information on how
much the branch power flow could be increased. When it is
over the critical value (the outage would cause the voltage
collapse), the system operator can obtain helpful indications of
how much the power flow must be reduced.
4
iPre contingency

where:
PI, and Q,, are the real and reactive power flows of branch i-j;
/\\
\\
Critical line
Non critical lind
ipower flow
: .

PI and QI are the real and reactive power injections in bus i: I \

100%
\
i
L

pij
-
AP,= -AP,,, AQ,,= tgcplJAP, and AQJ1= tgcp,, APjj. ................ 4
Critical flow *
The use of ( I ) gives information on the risk associated to ............................................................
+d
each outage. It is worth noticing that second order information
J
Critical flow
is embedded in the ranking, because it makes use of the LF
equation Hessian fxx[7]. Given that the cubic matrix fxx is very Fig.2 - The use of the linear index to assess cnncal power flows.
sparse, the ranking of all the contingencies can be made in a
very short time, because it requires only the base case LF and In the case there is at least one critical line, the operator
the Singular Value Decomposition. should try to make the system secure forcing it to the N-1
Due to the non linearity of Q,, the calculated variations secure state. This can be made reducing the power flow in the
of U, cannot be used to quantify the risk of voltage collapse critical branch(es) by the remedial control actions as the
following each contingency. In order to quantify the risk of rescheduling of power generations and. in emergency
voltage collapse, in VOSTA two different approaches can be

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situation. the load shedding strategy.
This paper gives the system operator indications on the usc:
of the information on the critical power flows determined.
From a practical point of view, it is necessary to reduce as
much as possible the risk of voltage collapse, but at the same
time it is necessary to guarantee the supply of the loads at
minimum cost. The critical power flow determined according
to the above mentioned procedures does not take into account
the influence of the other existing parallel paths: if the network
operator tries to reduce the power flow in the critical line of
the amount determined, he will reduce also the power flows in
the other parallel paths. For this reason, the above described
procedures can give very conservative values, that result in an
unnecessary rescheduling and sometimes in over dimensioned
load shedding. A more precise computation of the critical
values of the branch flows is performed by the procedure
described in the following section, that takes into account the
distribution of the power flows in the branches close lo the
critical one.
111. DETERMINATION OF THE PRACTICAL CRITICAL
FLOW IN A BRANCH
A more realistic estimate of the actual critical flow is
calculated based on the ranking and the quantification above
described. The ranking and the quantification procedure is
used as starting point to determine a) the critical branches and
b) a “first attempt” value of the necessary reduction of power
flows.
The first control action taken into account is the
rescheduling of the real power supplied by the generators. In
order to reduce the power flows in the nc critical branches, the
following linear programming procedure is carried out:
minx (41 subject to
iE NG
where:
PI is the power generated in the i-th control generation bus;
PS is the slack bus power generation;
P,,, is the actual power flow of the i-th critical branch;
the superscripts 0 and cr are relevant to the variables
calculated in the initial conditions and pertinent to the
estimated critical value respectively;
0-7803-5935-6/00/$10.00(c) 2000 IEEE
NG is the number of the control generation buses.
The problem (2) aims at reducing all the power flows in
the critical branches by moving, as less as possible, the real
power generation outputs from the dispatched values, in order
to get a feasible operating point. At the same time, the change
in the real power injected in the slack bus is estimated and the
relevant constraints on the deliverable power are taken into
account.
An iterative procedure is adopted to determine the exact
critical power flow. Taking into account that the full reduction
gives over-conservative rescheduling, while a too loa
reduction results in the divergence of the LF on the outaged
system, the power flow reductions P,‘f, -P:, on the critical
branches are changed by using a bisection method. At each
step, the feasibility of the solution of the linear problem (2) is
verified by a LF carried out by applying the new control
variable values in the outaged system. If the LF does not
converge, the constraints are modified in order to result in a
higher reduction; if the LF converges, a refinement of the
search is performed decreasing the reduction applied. As the
initial estimate of each critical value is generally lower than its
practical value, the procedure starts adopting a larger value
Pl;: , obtained halving the interval Pc‘f, -P:l. This trick
reduces the computation times.
The procedure is carried out until no critical lines are
detected by the ranking and quantification step, run at the end
of the linear programming step. If it is not possible to get a N-
I secure operating point. the procedure is restarted using a
minimum load shedding strategy in order to achieve the
security of the system. Fig3 shows the flow chart of the abo\e
described method.
It is worth noticing that, at the end of the process. a LF
computation verifies that all the branches do not become
critical as a consequence of the control actions adopted.
@JANTIFIC4TMN
Fig.3 -Flow chart of the ( N - I ) secunty analysis.
1741
 1V. DETERMINATION OF THE MAXIMUM TRANSFER The problem can be solved separately for each corridor I
CAPACITY THROUGH A POWER CORRIDOR because of the independence of the corridors.

According to the approach above described for a single V. TESTS AND RESULTS
branch. a similar procedure is presented in order to determine
if any critical power corridor could limit the power exchanges The procedures described above have been validated on
among different areas of the power system. two test systems: the Three Area Reliability Test System (73
A power corridor is defined as a set of branches that, due buses) and the Italian power system. The Three Area
to their "electrical proximity" behave approximately in the Reliability Test System [ll], modified to solve the maximum
same way and therefore can be considered together from the transfer capability problem by the CICRE Task Force [ 121 and
operation point of view. In a N-1 approach, a corridor is depicted in Fig.4, is well fitted to show the properties of the
critical when at least one of its branches is critical. Generally, proposed procedure. It is characterised by three different
the power flows in the branches of the same corridor have the control areas and by a significant power transfer to the load
same direction. busses located in the right lower part of Fig.4.
The concept of power corridor is particularly meaningful
for system operators because it takes into account the
relationships among lines: therefore they can control the
system considering that a control action on a line will affect, at
the same time, also some other lines, in particular those
belonging to the same corridor.
The benefit of making use of power corridors instead of
single lines derives from the best distribution of the flows that
can be achieved by the linear programming procedure, and
consequently from the best exploitation of the corridor
capacity. At the same time, the power flow reduction
determined by the procedure described in Sec.11, conservative
if applied to a single branch, is much more adequate if it is a
constraint on the global power flow through the relevant
power corridor.
The procedure starts making use of the ranking and
quantification results calculated as in Sec.11, i.e. determining
the critical lines and the relevant critical corridors. It exploits
the fact that the reduction in a branch flow results in a
reduction more or less significant also in the other branches of
the same corridor. The relevant formulation of the linear
problem is as follows:

subject to

Fig4 - IEEE Three Area Reliability Test System

The scenario adopted for the Italian system is relevant to

iE NG the situation before the blackout that stroke southern Italy in
August 1994, characterised by a low load level, a large
number of 380 kV lines both in maintenance and out of
where the variables have the same meaning as in (2). In service to avoid over-voltages. The complete description of
particular: this study case can be found in [3]. In particular, the northern
P,, is the power flow of the critical corridor i-th: part of Italy (Fig. 5 ) was connected to the southern part by tuo
(Valmontone-Presenzano and Villanova-Larino) of the four
P.!, +P: +...+Pc = P,, and 380 kV lines available and by a 220 kV line (Popoli-Capriatit.
P,? is relevant to the k-th line of the i-th corridor. The blackout took place when the 380 kV line Valmontonr-

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Presenzano) tripped out. Bajer and Bany - Basov are higher than the critical power
flows shown in Tab.1, but the system state determined is N-1
secure: this is because the values in Tab.1 are determined using
the over-conservative procedure described in Sec.11.

Tab.11 -Results of the proposed procedure

CRITICAL
POWER FLOW
BRANCH
IMWI
BARKLA - BLOCH -360.5
BANKS - BAJER 75.7
BARDEEN BARRY - -266
BARRY - BASOV -502.6

V.2 EHV Italian Power System

Fig.5 - The central pm of the Italian power system. The Italian system is characterised, in the studied situation.
by a significant power flow from north to south. Therefore, the
V.I IEEE Reliability Test System critical lines are those connecting these two areas, as shown in
Tab.111.
The first results are relevant to the LEEE test system and to The control strategy described in Sec.111 can be used to
the application of the procedure presented in Sec.111. As reduce power flows in order to get a N-1 secure state. In this
mentioned, the first step is the determination of the critical case, the generation output rescheduling is able to reach the
lines following the ranking and the quantification procedure. goal, without load shedding. It is worth noticing that, as shown
The set of the critical lines is shown in Tab.1. in Tab.111, the procedure based on the injections on the branch
terminals give a very conservative estimate of the more
-
Tab. J Critical power flow in the IEEE Test System practical value determined after rescheduling the real power
generation (more than about 400 MW in the case of the line
BRANCH CRITICAL CURRENT POWER
Valmontone Presenzano).
POWER FLOW FLOW
BARKLA - BLOCH -369.98 [MW] -411.1 [MW Tab.111 - Results of the pmcedure in Sec.JIl on the Italian system. a) is the
63.1 [Mvu] 70.1 [Mvw]
-
critical power flow of the line Valmontone Presenzano [MW] estimated
using the procedure in Sccl; b) are the power flows [MW] obtained by the
BANKS - BAJER 64.5 [ M W 129 [MW] procedure in the N-1 secure state after the rescheduling pmedure of Sec.111.
-70.78 [Mvar] -141.6 [Mvx]
BARDEEN - BARRY -232.3 [MW] -331.9 [MW]
-49.5 [Mvx] -70.7 [Mv~x]
BARRY - BASOV -342.2 [MW] -570.3 [MW] Valmontone - Presenzano
Montalto - Villanova 825 564
150.4 [Mvar] 250.7 [Mvar] Villnnnvn - larino 706 393

The procedure described in Sec.111 tries to determine a N-1

secure operating state. In this case, the real power
rescheduling of generators is not able to drive the system to a
N-1 secure state. Therefore, in order to get a secure state, the
linear programming procedure must adopt the load shedding
strategy. In fact, the final point determined is obtained
applying the control actions on generators shown in Fig.4 (the
modification of the generated outputs can be seen in the
boxes) together with the load shedding of 64 MW and 46
Mvar in bus Bajer. Tab.11 shows the power flows determined
by the proposed procedure for the branches of Tab.1. It is
worth noticing that the final power flows in lines Banks -
The same case can be studied using the procedure
described in Sec.IV to exploit the full capability of the power
corridor given by the three lines Valmontone-Presenzano.
Popoli-Capriati and Villanova - Larino. The procedure, in this
case, aims at reducing the power flow in the corridor of about
950 MW, which is the reduction needed for the only line
Valmontone-Presenzano (Tab.IV). The linear programming
procedure distributes the reduction among the corridor
branches and allows the system to get a secure state. The
power flows in the corridor branches are much higher than the
power flows obtained by the procedure described in Sec.11

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 (fictitious injection method). The comparison of the power Greece. August 1998
flows in Tab.IV shows the advantage of using the procedure W Rosehart. C Cmi~ans. V Quintana, “Optimal power flow
incorporating voltage cdbpse constiaints”. E E E PES 1999 S u m
proposcd in this paper. Meeting. Edmonton (Camda). 18-22 July 1999. pp.820-825
A Timuchit. R Thomar, “A postunng strategy against voltage
instability in electnc power systems”. IEEE Trans. on PWRS. Vol.?.
Tab.lV - Results of the procedure in Sec IV on the Italian system. a) comdor No 1. Febr. 1988. pp.87-93
power [MW] applying the fictitlous injection method, b) cntical power flows A Benzzi. P.Rn&. D &si. P . M m i n o , S.Corsi. “first and second
[MW] after the rescheduling procedure of Sec IV. order methods f a voltnge collapse assessment and secunp
enhancements”. EEE Transon PWRS, Vol 13. No 2 May 1996.
pp.543-55I
INITIAL J.Barquin, T Gomes. F.LPagola. ”Estimating the loading margm takmg
CRITICAL BRANCH FLOW
r. ...
,7
a) b) into account voltage colhpse area”, IEEE Trans. on PWRS. Vol.lO.
N0.4. NOV.1995, pp.1952-1962.
Valmontone - Presenzano 1358 407 877 P.A Lbf,T.Smed, G Andcnon, D H.Hil1, “Fast calculation of a voltage
Popoli - Capriati 147 60 stability index”, IEEE 2“.on PWRS. Vo1.6. No.1, Feb. 1992. pp
61
1529-1542.
Villanova - Larino 706 215 41 1 A.Benzzi, Y.G.Z?ng. R.Abbmzzetti, M.Delfanu. P Marannmo.
CORRIDOR 2211 682 1349 P A Scarpelhi, ”Conungency screening and nsk quantification related
to voltage collapse in extended real time”. CEE htemational Conference
on Advances in Power System Control, Operatlon & Managemem
Vol I. Hong Kong.Nov., 1997, pp 176-181.
VI. CONCLUSIONS The IEEE Reliability Tat System, Task Force APM Subcommittee.
IEEE PES Winter Meeting, .paper 96WM326-9 PWRS. Baltimore.
This paper presents a procedure suitable to determine the January 1996
most effective preventive control actions that ensure the N-1 CIGRE Task Force 38.oL.02, “Applicauon of optinusation technique
to study power system network performance”, Technical Brochure 112.
security operation with respect to voltage collapse. It starts Oct.1997
with the selection of the critical contingencies from the A Benzn. G Demartini. SI.Delfanti. P. M m n i n o . G Riui. ”Secunn
voltage collapse point of view and with the quantification of constrruned OPF for optimal transacuons scheduling in an open access
their severity. environment”, Proceedings of the 13* Power System Computihcn
Conference. Trondkim (Norway), June 28-July 2, 1999, pp 1214-1214
A generation rescheduling. and additionally a load
shedding strategy, can be adopted to reduce the power flow in IX. AKVOLEDGMENTS
the critical branches and to avoid the voltage collapse in case
of tripping of the critical branch. For the determination of thc The authors wish IO thank ENEL SpA for the financial support
m o s t suitable control actions, a linear programming problem IS received for this research.
iteratively solved.
In order to improve the exploitation of the branch 1X. BIOGRAPHIES
capabilities, the procedure aims at sharing the reduction
required on a power corridor, given by several branches, Albert0 Berizzi (M’93) receked his M Sc. degree (1990) and hs Ph D
degree (1994) both in Elerrrid Engineenng from the Politecnico Q Milvlo
instead of attribute it to a line only. This allows a more reliable He is now Associate Professor a the Electncal Engineering Department of the
and practical definition of the maximum power that can be Politecnico di Milano. His areas of research include power system analysis
transferred from area to area. and voltage stability
The procedure gives reliable results, as demonstrated by Yong-Gang Zeng receiwd his B.Sc. degree (1985). his M.Sc degree (1988)
both in Electncal E n g i m n g from the Chongqing University (Ctuna). He
the case studies presented, relevant to a test system and a real received also the PhD hgrec at the Politecnico di Milano in 1998. HIS
large size system. research areas include HVDC, power system analysis and voltage stability.
Marco Merlo received m(: M.Sc. Degree in Electrical Engineenng at $L
VII. REFERENCES Politecnico di Milano in 1999. His areas of research include power system
analysis and control.
Paolo Marannino (M86. S M 9 5 ) received his Dr. degree in Electnul
[I] S.Greene. LDobson. F.L.Alvmdo, “Contingency mking for voltage Engineenng from the University of Ban (Italy) in 1968. In 1970 he joined the
collapse via sensitinties from a single nose curve“, EEE Trans on Automation and Computmon Research Center of ENEL in Milan. where he
PWRS. Vol 14. No.1. Febr.1999. pp 232-240. has been responsible for resexch activities in the field of power system
[2] T. Van Cutsem. C Moisse. R Mailhot. “Deteninauon of secure analysis. optinusation and control. Since 1994 he is a Professor of Elecms
operating limits with respect to voltage collapse“. E E E Trans. on Energy Systems at the Universiy of Pavia.
PWRS. Vo1.14. No.1, Febr.1999. pp.327-335
Pierangelo Scarpellini raeived the Dr. degree in Electncal Engneenng from
[3] A. Berim. Y. G. Zmg. P. Marannino, A. Vaccmni, PA. Scarpellini.
the Politecnico di Milan in 1973 He joined Automation and Computi”
“A Second Order Method for Contingency Seventy Assessment with Research Center of ENEL in 1974, where he is responsible of power system
respect to Voltage Collapse”, Accepted for Publication IEEE Trans on dynamics. analysis and coatrol. He is active in CIGRE and UNIPEDE WG k r
PWRS, Paper PE-028-PWRS-0-02-1999 the study of the defence a
d restoration plans of European networks.
[4] A. Benui. Y. G Zeng. P. M m n i n o , A Vaccarhi, P. A. Scarpellini,
“Voltage collapse assessment in an on-line DSA procedure”. Bulk
Power Systems. Dynamlcs and Control IV-Restmctunng , Santonni,

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