Comprehensive approach for prediction and assessment

of power system transient stability in real-time

Diego E. Echeverría1, José L. Rueda2, Jaime C. Cepeda1, Delia G. Colomé3 and István Erlich2
1
Corporación CENACE, Quito, Ecuador
2
University Duisburg-Essen, Duisburg, Germany
3
Universidad Nacional de San Juan, San Juan, Argentina
{decheverria, jcepeda}@cenace.org.ec, {jose.rueda, istvan.erlich}@uni-due.de, colome@iee.unsj.edu.ar

Abstract-- Secure operation of power systems is receiving a clustering for identification of critical machines, and the
renewed interest due to considerable structural changes and emergency single machine equivalent method (E-SIME)
greater uncertainties. Thus, motivated by implementation of method for transient stability assessment [3]. Based on a set of
wide-area measurement systems in power systems worldwide, measurements acquired in real time after occurrence and
recent research work is being devoted to the development of clearing of a disturbance or any sudden outage (i.e. immediate
enhanced tools for fast security assessment within reduced time post-fault conditions), it provides relevant information
frames. The work presented in this paper introduces an regarding the number and alignment of critical machines, the
approach that exploits the post-disturbance data acquired via system stability margin, and the time to instability. Tests are
phasor measurement units (PMUs) by using a finite difference
performed on the New England benchmark power system.
based method for the prediction of rotor angles, data-mining-
based clustering for identification of critical machines, and II. MODEL OF MULTI-MACHINE POWER SYSTEM
single-machine-infinite bus (SMIB) transformation to evaluate
the system transient stability in terms of unstable margin and Mathematically, for each synchronous generator in a
time to instability. Numerical results obtained by applying the power system, the rotor angle i (i=1,2,...n) is determined by
approach on the New England test system demonstrates the the swing equation [4]:
feasibility and effectiveness that could be achieved in predicting d  i (t )
the critical machines and unstable conditions, which is also of  i ( t )   o
great value for defining suitable emergency control actions. dt (1)
d i (t ) 1
Index Terms—Equivalent machine, PMU, Transient stability,   Pmi (t )  Pei (t ) (2)
real-time assessment. dt Mi
where M is the moment of inertia, Pm is the mechanical
I. INTRODUCTION power input, Pe is the electrical power output, and ω is the
speed of the generator rotor.
There are many instances in which power systems are Equations (1) and (2) can be approximated by using the
operated close to their security limits. Moreover, under such
trapezoidal rule. Thus, the values of speed and rotor angles
operating conditions, some faults and contingencies may lead
to major consequences, including widespread disruptions or for each generator, at each time instant tk, are determined as
even blackouts, whose root causes have been occasionally follows [5]:
attributed to large-disturbance (i.e. transient) stability t  tk  tk-1 (3)
problems [1]. The emergence of synchrophasor and wide area
Pm i (tk )  Pei (tk )
acquisition technologies has become crucial for the i (tk )  t (4)
development of innovative technological solutions regarding Mi
improved real-time monitoring, and control tasks, which aim i (tk )  i (tk-1 )  i (tk ) (5)
at maximizing the operating flexibility while fulfilling
1
economic, security and environmental requirements. i (tk )  i (tk-1 )  i (tk-1 )  i (tk ) t (6)
Remarkably, tracking the system post-fault dynamic 2
performance in real time is enabled nowadays by phasor III. EQUIVALENT MACHINE METHOD
measurement unit devices (PMUs), which should be
strategically distributed throughout the system to achieve high Broadly speaking, the single machine equivalent method
observability [2]. (SIME) assesses the behavior of a power system in its post-
fault configuration (i.e. after a disturbance inception and its
This paper proposes an approach that combines a novel
algorithm for rotor angle prediction, data-mining-based clearance) in terms of a generalized single-machine-infinite
bus (SMIB) transformation [6]. This SMIB equivalent results constitutes the reactance between the machine terminal and
from the aggregation of “critical machines” and “non-critical the point in the network where the PMU device is installed
machines” into two equivalent machines. whereas Xq is the quadrature-axis reactance. The sampling
The identification of these two groups of machines is interval t = 20 ms is to be used in this paper (i.e. to match
illustrated in Fig. 1(a). The time-dependent parameters of the typical PMU sampling rate at 50 Hz).
“generalized SMIB” (i.e. rotor angle and speed, mechanical
and electrical powers), are computed from the parameters of
the power system machines. In E-SIME, these multi-machine
parameters are derived from real-time measurements, and
recalculated at a regular interval.

(a) (b)
Figure 1. SIME’s principle: (a) Power systems curves and identification of
critical machines; (b) Equal area criterion application to the SMIB equivalent
system.

The stability properties of the SMIB are inferred from the

application of the equal-area criterion (EAC). This yields two
essential pieces of information, namely, stability margin and
critical machines. The stability margin indicates the
imbalance between accelerating and decelerating areas
belonging to SMIB’s P- plane, or, equivalently, of the Pa-
plane, as illustrated in Fig. 1(b), where Pa denotes the SMIB
accelerating power:
Pa  Pm  Pe (7)
Pm is mechanical power and Pe is electrical power.
IV. PROPOSED APPROACH
The overall procedure of the proposed approach is
schematically depicted in Fig. 2.
Figure 2. Flowchart of the proposed approach.
A. Calculation of rotor variables
The values of the machine angles  at each time instant tk B. Prediction of rotor angles
are calculated from measurements of magnitude and phase of This task is accomplished by using the finite difference
voltages and currents provided by PMU devices located at method to predict the rotor angle position at a later time point
system high voltage buses. This procedure is necessary since tp [9]. An expression for estimating the angle  at tp is
PMU devices do not provide information that can be directly obtained by applying approximations for the first and second
used for transient stability analysis [7]. Such devices measure derivative of the Taylor series expansion of the rotor angle
electrical variables in real time (e.g. voltages and currents), discrete equation truncated to the third order and provided
whereas mechanical variables have to be estimated for that values of  at the instants tk, tk-1 and tk-2 are known:
carrying out transient stability assessment (e.g. generator i (tp )  i (tk-2 )  1 (tp  tk-2 )   2 (tp  tk-1 )(tp  tk-2 )
rotor angle and speed). Hence, the proposed approach uses (9)
the methodology presented in [8] to approximate the where
generator rotor angles. Basically, the equation to be used is:  (t )  i (tk-1 )  (t )  i (tk )  
1  i k-2 , 0  i k-1 , 2  1 0 (10)
  X q +X e  Icos  tk-2  tk-1 tk-1  tk tk-2  tk
  tan -1   (8)
 Vt +  X q +X e  Isin  C. Determination of critical machines
 
Once the rotor angles are predicted, the machines are
where the terminal current I, the terminal voltage Vt, and the
ranked according to their angles and the candidate critical
voltage angle , are available signals from PMU devices. Xe machines are identified by considering the largest angular
distance between two successive values of rotor angle. The
suitable aggregation of these machines provides the candidate
SMIB equivalent [3]. For this purpose, an angle  dissimilarity
matrix (D) is built by applying the Recursive Method for
Online Coherency Calculation (RMOCC) [10].
0 d12 ... d1n 
d 0 ... d 2 n 
D   21
 . . ... . 
 
 d n1 dn2 ... 0 
where n is the number of buses, and dij is the distance between
bus i and bus j determined via RMOCC [10].
After building the dissimilarity matrix, the corresponding
similitude matrix (Q) can be obtained by (12), where I is the
identity matrix and 1 is the all-ones vector [2]. These matrices
represent the variability between elements.
1 1   1 
Q   I  11 D I  11
2 n   n 
Using eigenvalues (Λr) and eigenvectors (Vr) of the
matrix Q, it is possible to calculate their corresponding
principal coordinates [2], [11], and put them together to form
a multi-dimensional space data matrix (X), as shown by (13)
and (14). Yr is a matrix that contains the new orthogonal
variables that keep the original distances (principal
coordinates) [2], [11].
Yr  Vr Λ r1/ 2
X  Yr
Once the data matrix X ( stands for rotor angle data) is
determined, its multi-dimensional data points are grouped
into two clusters using the Fuzzy C-Means (FCM) algorithm.
This clustering algorithm allows partitioning the machines
into critical and non-critical groups.
D. Inferring the Pa- curve of the SMIB equivalent
Based on the predicted angles of the individual machines,
the values of the candidate SMIB, specially, its accelerating
power Pa and rotor angle δ, are determined for at least three
successive data sets acquired at tk-2Δt, tk-Δt and tk [3]. Equation
(15) is written for the three different time instants and solved
for a, b, and c.
Pa    a2  b  c
E. Prediction and assessment of system instability
Equation (15) is solved to determine whether the SMIB’s
angle reaches unstable conditions, i.e. Pa (tu )  0, Pa (tu )  0 ,
where Pa is the SMIB accelerating power and tu is the time to
instability.
Pa ( u )  a u 2  b u  c  0
If the unstable conditions are not reached, the steps
described in the previous subsections IV.B, IV.C and IV.D are
repeated using a new measurement set. Otherwise, the
candidate SMIB is a critical one, for which the following
items are computed successively:
 The critical angle u.
 The margin to instability u, given by
(11) u
1
  P d   2 M
2
a k (17)
k
 The time to instability
u
d
tu  tk  
k 2

(18)
  Pa d  2k
M k
where k and k are the rotor angle and speed at time tk.
F. Emergency control
The prediction of the time to instability is of great
(12)
importance to arrive at appropriate control decisions. As
shown in Fig. 2, the proposed procedure for prediction and
assessment of transient stability can be coupled with a
scheme for emergency control, for which, it is crucial to
determine the type, location, extent, and execution time of
potential corrective actions. For illustrative purposes, this
paper considers generation shedding as a countermeasure.
V. RESULTS
(13)
The proposed approach is tested on the New England
system [12], whose single line diagram is shown in Fig. 3.
(14)
The implementation was accomplished by using DIgSILENT
Power Factory© [17] along with several routines written in
MATLAB® [18]. The case study presented in this section
focuses on the prediction of transient instability after the
occurrence of a three phase short circuit in line 2-25 near bus
2. The prediction calculations start once a fault is cleared at
t=0.22 s and consider at least three measurements at the time
points tk-2t, tk-t, tk. Results for every stage of the
procedure are summarized in the following subsections.
A. Computation and prediction of the rotor angles
Fig. 4 shows the time evolution of rotor angles of
system’s generators, which are derived, according to the
guidelines given in subsection IV.A, from measurements of
voltages and currents provided by PMUs (placed at high
(15)
voltage buses of each generator’s transformer). For a given
time point, the rotor angles are predicted for the next100 ms
by using (9) and (10), cf. subsection IV.B. Fig. 5 shows the
accuracy that can be achieved by comparing the predicted
values with the theoretical ones derived from PMU data. The
average values were removed from the calculated angles
shown in Fig. 4 to obtain those shown in Fig. 5.
(16)
B. Identification of critical machines
The procedure given in subsection IV.C is followed to
build the dissimilarity matrix D, the corresponding similitude
matrix Q, and the data matrix Xθ in order to partition the
machines into critical and non-critical groups based on FCM
clustering. Fig. 5 also illustrates the grouping and relative
resemblance between the time evolution of the rotor angles of
the generators belonging to each one of the two groups.
Figure 3. New England test System.
Fig. 4. Comparison between the rotor angle values derived from PMU
measurements and those obtained via model-based time domain simulations.
The signals correspond to post-disturbance responses after the occurrence of
a three phase short circuit in line 2-25 near bus 2. The fault is cleared at
t=0.22 s.
C. Pa- curve of the SMIB equivalent
After identifying the critical machines, the next step aims
at determining the parameters of the candidate SMIB, that is,
the accelerating power Pa and rotor angle δ at the instants tk-
2Δt, tk-Δt and tk. This task is repeated if the new data of a
subsequent point of time is added to the already collected
information. The resulting estimated Pa-δ curves are
illustrated in Fig. 6. These curves present better
approximations with respect to the real curve (red dotted
continuous line) when more measurement points are
considered by the prediction algorithm.
D. Evaluating the system transient stability
At this stage, equation (16) is solved to compute the
unstable angle u in order to ascertain whether an unstable
condition has been reached (i.e. critical SMIB). If unstable
condition does not occur, the steps described in the previous
subsections IV.B, IV.C and IV.D are continually repeated
using an updated and expanded measurement set. For
illustrative purposes, Table I lists values for different
subsequent instants tk (points of time at which a measurement
is received) as well as the corresponding estimated unstable
margin  and time to instability tu. The results listed in the
Table were obtained after detecting an unstable condition,
which occurs after 540 ms in this particular case. This is
reasonable since the application of the procedure given in
subsections IV.E would yield η >0 (stable condition) for the
first few measurements. Note that the time tu, in which the
instability is predicted (i.e. first negative value of η), is
considerably short (around 620 ms). Thus, for tk=560 ms,
there would be approximately 60 ms remaining to perform a
control action, which suggest the implementation of a scheme
at the control center for execution of countermeasures in an
automatic manner.
Fig. 5. Prediction of the rotor angles from previously calculated values and
identification and grouping of critical and non-critical generators.
Fig. 6. Prediction of the Pa-δ curve of the SMIB equivalent
E. Performing emergency control
The design of suitable control actions involves increasing
the deceleration area of the system, which could be achieved,
for instance, by using predefined countermeasure schemes,
such as generation shedding [15].
 For this case study, emergency control is performed by
tripping generators G8 and G9 at t=610 ms (i.e. 50 ms after
the instability is first detected), which constitute the critical
machines (cf. Fig. 5). Fig. 7 shows the evolution of the rotor
angles when considering the execution of the resulting
emergency control action, which is decided by the alert
provided by the proposed approach. Note that the loss of
synchronism and the collapse of the system are avoided.
TABLE I
Prediction and assessment of transient stability
tk (s)  tu (s)
0.540 >0 -
0.560 -1.161 0.620
0.580 -2.323 0.627
0.600 -3.218 0.633
0.620 -3.793 0.638
0.640 -4.015 0.642
Fig. 7. Evolution of generator rotor angles when performing emergency
control in the form of generation shedding: tripping of generators 8 and 9 at
610 ms.
VI. CONCLUSIONS
Generator speed and rotor angle data series can be derived
from PMU measurements of voltages and currents, and this
information can be used to predict rotor angle at subsequent
time points. In view of this, this paper proposes an approach
that employs simple procedures for the prediction of rotor
angles and transient stability assessment from PMU data in
real-time. The prediction of generator rotor angle position at
future points of time is performed by using the finite
difference method. The simplified representation of a power
system by means of SMIB equivalent model allows
characterizing the transient stability in terms of the unstable
margin and the time to instability, which entails low
computational burden. Numerical results obtained by
applying the approach on the New England test system
demonstrates the feasibility and effectiveness that could be
achieved in predicting the critical machines and unstable
conditions, which is also of great value for defining suitable
emergency control actions. For illustrative purposes, this
work considered countermeasures in the form of generation
shedding, which would not be desirable in real practice.
Nevertheless, future research work is being directed towards
the development of a more sophisticated control scheme,
which will be tested on a real power system. Further research
work is also needed to cover practical implementation
concerns related to communication speed and reliability,
since the available time for application of the approach in real
time is very short and more sophisticated information
technology development should be reached.
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