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Energy Reports 7 (2021) 111–117

www.elsevier.com/locate/egyr

2020 The International Conference on Power Engineering (ICPE 2020), December 19–21, 2020,
Guangzhou, China

Analysis of power system transient stability characteristics with the

application of massive transient stability simulation data
Haocheng Yanga ,∗, Kunkun Niua , Dechao Xub , Shuwen Xub
a Sichuan Provincial Key Lab of Power System Wide Area Measurement and Control, School of Mechanical and Electrical Engineering, University
of Electronic Science and Technology of China, Chengdu, Sichuan 611731, China
b State Key Laboratory of Power Grid Safety and Energy Conservation (China Electric Power Research Institute), Haidian

District, Beijing 100192, China

Received 25 January 2021; accepted 2 February 2021

Abstract
A large number of simulation results will be generated during the calculation of the power system digital simulation.
Manual analysis of massive numerical results is inefficient and error-prone. Besides, some imperceptible operating rules of
power system operating mode may be ignored. In order to solve these problems, a transient stability assessment method
based on deep learning is proposed in this paper. By analyzing simulation data, the relationship between power grid stability
characteristics and the set operation mode is constructed. According to these research results, the calculation and analysis of
power system transient stability will be effectively supported.
⃝c 2021 Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license
(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).
Peer-review under responsibility of the scientific committee of the International Conference on Power Engineering, ICPE, 2020.

Keywords: Power system; Transient stability simulation; Big data

1. Introduction
With the fast developed sensoring technologies in energy industry, large amount of operating data had generated
through all operation process of power system, which has characteristics of heterogeneous types, storage variety,
and huge volume [1]. When conducting power system simulation analysis, it is difficult for traditional methods to
apply with the advanced computing technologies (such as cloud computing) to guide the power grid operation [2].
A large number of simulation results would be produced in the simulation calculation of the supercomputing
center, which is essentially a large amount of time series data of transient stable response [3,4]. In recent years, many
researches focused on power system transient stability evaluation based on big data analysis, mainly adopting the
technology of offline training and online matching [5–7]. For example, a classifier with low dimensionality and poor
∗ Corresponding author.
E-mail address: m15603923187@163.com (H. Yang).

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.egyr.2021.02.015
2352-4847/⃝ c 2021 Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/
licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).
Peer-review under responsibility of the scientific committee of the International Conference on Power Engineering, ICPE, 2020.
H. Yang, K. Niu, D. Xu et al. Energy Reports 7 (2021) 111–117

accuracy is used to classify and regression analysis data, and high-dimensional time series data is ignored; training
sample space is insufficient, and it is difficult to cover low-probability and high-risk scenarios, and there is a lack
of knowledge in the obtained simulation results, which leads to artificial intelligence is insufficient. In [8], in order
to use SCADA data to quickly identify weak links in power systems stability, methods such as residue analysis
are used to find stable patterns in the feature space, and then to train decision trees to achieve rapid judgment.
Literature [9] uses multiple support vector machines for parameter optimization to achieve higher classification
accuracy. The artificial intelligence training and application research results based on massive transient stability
simulation results have insufficient adaptability, and there are problems such as the inability to directly guide the
generation and update of power grid control strategies.
To solve the above problems, it is necessary to carry out research on high-dimensional time series data
classification, sample space decomposition, intelligent derivation of simulation scenarios, the strong correlation of
events, and cluster mining and deep reinforcement learning techniques for power grid optimization, control and
disposal decisions. In this paper, an artificial intelligence rapid assessment method based on simulation results for
transient stability is proposed, the characteristics of power grid instability are given, the generation of artificial
intelligence control strategies for power grid transient stability is guided, the generation and adjustment of stability
control schemes are supported, strong events in time series correlation are analyzed, typical stable forms and defense
measures are analyzed, fault handling decision-making is supported, and weak links in the power grid are found
based on simulation results.
The rest of this paper is organized as follows. A method to distinguish power system transient stability is
established in Section 2. In Section 3, the LSTM algorithm to predict transient stability is used, which can be
automatically obtained from the initial information measured by the PMU without manual intervention, to obtain
characteristics and predict the transient stability of the power system. Finally, through simulation, an actual example
was shown on New England 10-machine 39-bus and the results were analyzed.

2. Power system transient stability distinguishing method

The power angle will change after the synchronous motor being disturbed. However, due to its ability to maintain
synchronization, the power angle will tend to be stable. When the power system is stable, the rotation speed of each
generator will not change greatly. In addition, the electromagnetic torque output and the mechanical torque input
basically maintain a balance. If the external environment has a disturbance to the system at this time, it will cause
the generator’s rotor speed to rise or fall suddenly. Besides, if the speed deviation of any two generators in the
system is too large, or the power angle difference is too large, transient instability will occur.
The state shown in Fig. 1 is the swing curve of the power grid after a certain disturbance. It can be seen from
Fig. 1 that the power angle of the generator of this system changes periodically after being disturbed, and shows
a divergent trend, so it is transiently unstable. After the power system fails, the operation of the motor rotor can

Fig. 1. Power angle trajectory in transient instability.

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accurately reflect the transient stability characteristics. Here is the concept of transient stability index (TSI), whose
formula is as follows:
θ − δmax
T SI = (1)
θ + δmax
where θ is the set degree; δmax is the absolute value of the maximum power angle difference between any two
generators in the system. After obtaining this value, it can be used to judge the transient stability of the system,
which is expressed as follows:
{
0 T SI ≤ 0
Y = (2)
1 T SI > 0
If TSI is less than zero, that is, the power angle difference between any two generators is greater than the
maximum power angle allowed when the system is stable, the system is unstable, and the representative value Y=0.
Conversely, when the representative value Y=1, there is no generator out of synchronization in the system, and
the system is stable. In the actual system, the value of the maximum power angle difference is closely related to
the time of fault removal. Generally speaking, the slower the fault removal, the larger the maximum power angle
difference, and the easier it is to judge the system as unstable.
Voltage instability has different forms. After the power system fails or other types of large disturbances, along
with the relative swing between generators in the process of handling the accident, some load bus voltages
experience an irreversible sudden drop, and this The relative swing between generators may not exceed the degree
of destabilizing the power angle of the power system. This type of characteristic is often referred to as a transient
voltage stability problem. Generally, the problem of power system voltage stability is caused by insufficient reactive
power in the system. Voltage stability and power angle stability can be developed around the basic properties of
the differential algebraic equations of the power system. The voltage stability behavior is mainly reflected in the
existence of equilibrium, small disturbance voltage stability, large disturbance voltage stability and probabilistic
analysis of voltage stability.

3. LSTM-based transient stability analysis method

The main task of data mining for transient stability based on deep learning is to first obtain characteristic data that
can correctly reflect the dynamic characteristics of the system. Then to define the stability of the system state after
being disturbed. Next, the LSTM learning model is constructed, and the input data and its corresponding stability
state are learned and trained. Finally, the stability evaluation of the data set to be verified is completed.
The quality of the input features has a great influence on the final effect of the deep learning model. When the
power system is disturbed, the bus voltage and current, generator power angle and speed in the system will fluctuate
accordingly. The transient stability information contained in these time-series data is the object of data mining.
Obviously, it is not realistic to collect all these “possibly related” data. Even if the data are able to collect,
it is difficult to fully meet the real-time standards, and the requirements for communication capabilities are too
high. In addition, there may be worthless information in the collected data. Although deep learning algorithms
can automatically learn to extract the limited information, it will add meaningless workload to the model, which
may slow down its prediction speed. Therefore, considering which input features to choose is also improving the
practicality of the model.
It can be known that the input feature should satisfy at least two rules. One is that it can be obtained in real time
through the PMU, which is the basis of the data technology introduced above. Second, it can be confirmed that it
has an impact on the results of transient stability, and the transient stability can be judged more or less based on
it, which is to reduce useless data as much as possible. First, the data that the PMU can collect are node voltages,
branch currents, etc., but cannot collect mechanical quantities such as power angles. Second, when the input–output
response time is reasonable, the voltage can accurately reflect the transient stability. However, the accuracy of the
power angle and speed is low, so the input characteristics of the voltage are the best choice. Besides, there are also
some data that prove that other data can more accurately assess the transient stability of the system, such as the
power flow information of the branch. Therefore, after comprehensive consideration, this article chooses the bus
voltage amplitude, phase angle and branch current as the collection objects.
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After determining which input features to collect, since the data information is time series, the time node of
collection should also be considered. Select the time node to collect data before the disturbance, when the fault
occurs and when the fault is removed. In the field of deep learning, the data collection time can be selected from
the moment before the fault occurs to the moment after the fault occurs, which contains the information of the
entire fault process. When the removal time of the fault is different, it will cause the change of the collection time,
and the data needs to be normalized to facilitate training. The normalized formula is shown in the following Eq. (3),
where x represents a certain input feature, x’ represents the input value after normalization, and xm and xs represent
the mean and standard deviation of the same column position in all initial data.
x − xm
x′ = (3)
xs
The input characteristics can be expressed by the following Eq. (4), where V represents the voltage amplitude,
θ is the phase angle, and MAX is the total number of buses. I is the branch current and max is the total number of
branches. t represents the time, and T is the sequence length of the time sequence. For branch currents, the positive
direction of the value is defined as the lower numbered node points to the higher numbered node. The occurrence
of 0 is because the sequence length of a certain time series is not necessarily the maximum length. The 0 here will
not interfere with the training process, nor will it affect the automatic feature extraction of the deep learning model.

... θ1,1 ... θ M AX,1 ...

⎡ ⎤
V1,1 VM AX,1 I1,1 Imax,1
... ... ...
⎢ ⎥
⎢ ⎥
⎢ ⎥
... θ1,t ... θ M AX,t . . . Imax,t ⎥
⎢ ⎥
⎢V1,t VM AX,t I1,t
⎢ ⎥
... ... ...
⎢ ⎥
⎢ ⎥
x(i) = ⎢ (4)
⎢ ⎥
... θ1,T ... θ M AX,t . . . Imax,T ⎥
⎥
⎢V1,T VM AX,T I1,T
⎢ ⎥
... ...
⎢ ⎥
⎢0 0 0 ⎥
⎢ ⎥
... ...
⎢ ⎥
⎢ ⎥
⎣ ⎦
0 ... 0 ... 0

4. Case study
The simulation software used in this paper is the PSASP (Power System Analysis Comprehensive Program)
developed by the China Electric Power Research Institute. The New England 10-machine 39-bus system shown in
Fig. 2 is used to perform example analysis and collect fault data. The system frequency of the system is 60HZ,
which is composed of 39 buses, 10 generators, 12 transformers and 34 lines. The technical basis of data collection
is the PMU set in the power grid, and the observability of the entire power grid can be achieved by optimizing the
position of the PMU configured.
Sample data is necessary to consider the diversity of the samples, and according to the options provided by
the software, simulate the transient stability characteristics in various situations as much as possible. First, there is
the load level. Under the standard load state, the probability of transient instability is theoretically the lowest. In
the actual grid operation, it is more hoped that the grid will maintain operation at the standard load level, so the
load level is no longer distinguished here. Then there is the setting of the faulty branch. In reality, the possibility of
failure of each branch will be affected by conditions such as maintenance level, environment and equipment age, but
these influencing factors cannot be reflected in the simulation process. All branches are equally designed for failure.
Regarding the setting of the fault removal time, the influence of the fault removal time on the stability judgment was
mentioned above. After multiple simulation results analysis and comprehensive judgment, two fault removal times
were selected for data collection. Finally, there is the setting of the branch fault location. The failure at different
locations on the branch will also affect the stability of the system, and the reason is the same as the possibility of
the failure of each branch. Here, four points of the line are taken out, simulation. The sample collection settings
are as Table 1.
Without changing the standard load level, by editing the network fault settings, the faults were set at 80%, 60%,
40%, and 20% of the 34 lines respectively. The types of faults are all set using the quick setting, which is set to
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Fig. 2. New England 10-machine 39-node system.

Table 1. Sample collection set.

Set Quantity Remark
Load level 1 Standard load
Fault type 1 Three-phase short circuit
Fault branch 34 All branches
Branch location 4 20%, 40%, 60%, 80%
Fault removal time 2 1.1 s and 1.8 s

three phase short-circuit fault. The fault access time is set as the fault start time Ts is 1 s, and the fault end time
is 2.1 s and 2.8 s. The total calculated time is set to 5 s, and the integration step length is set to 0.01 s. Collected
544 fault data samples.
The data samples obtained from the simulation results are divided, 80% of the data is used as the training set,
and 20% of the data is used as the verification set. The neural network is trained and the prediction result is made.
It is evaluated by AUC (Area Under ROC curve) [10], ACC (accuracy) and other evaluation standards. After the
constructed LSTM deep learning model is trained, the power system transient stability of the verification set data
is predicted and analyze the forecast results.
It can be seen from Table 2 that the loss functions of the training set and the validation set of the model show
a downward trend in the training process. The effect is obvious in the first few training sessions, and eventually
all dropped to below 0.1. However, as the number of training rounds increases, the value of the loss function
continuously produces small-range fluctuations, and this fluctuation appears periodic. It can be found that a certain
over-fitting phenomenon has occurred. For dual-hidden-layer or multi-hidden-layer models, when the training set
loss function value is very low, the prediction accuracy is high, but the validation set loss function is large, and
the prediction accuracy is greatly affected, dropout method can be used to model optimize. The principle is that
in the forward propagation process of each training batch, a certain number of hidden layer node values are set
to zero, that to reduce the interaction between nodes, and achieve the effect of regularization of the results. The
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Table 2. LSTM training process.

Training round Training set loss function Validation set loss function
1 0.63 0.40
2 0.24 0.38
5 0.14 0.08
10 0.08 0.06
15 0.04 0.04
17 0.14 0.08
20 0.06 0.05
23 0.13 0.08
25 0.03 0.03
30 0.06 0.05

Table 3. Evaluation result.

ACC AUC F1 Recall rate Accuracy
0.945 0.935 0.961 0.961 0.961

over-fitting phenomenon can also be optimized by increasing the number of sample data, optimizing training batches
and rounds.
Since the sample data comes from transient simulation, the proportion of stability and instability in the data
sample is not balanced, and the value of the loss function in the training process cannot be used as the evaluation
criterion here.
It can be seen from Table 3 that the accuracy rate can meet the requirements of prediction. By expanding the
training sample, the AUC value can be improved, and a single prediction result will have a relatively large impact
on the evaluation value. The value deviation between model recall rate and accuracy is very small, and there is also
the reason that the verification set size is not large enough. Through the judgment of the F1 value, the model has no
major problems. The LSTM deep learning model can complete the judgment of transient stability without further
structural optimization.

5. Conclusion
This paper proposes a model for judging the transient stability of the power system based on a deep learning
algorithm, and proposes that this algorithm can locate faults and perform further specific analysis of the faults, so
that the power system can be more Reduce losses quickly. Sample data is obtained by simulating on New England
10-machine 39-buses, and the training process and final prediction results are analyzed.

Declaration of competing interest

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could
have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

Acknowledgment
The authors gratefully acknowledge the support by the Science and Technology Project of SGCC, China (Re-
search on Supporting Technology of Power System Operation Mode Calculation Platform Based on Supercomputer).

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