Transient Stability and Control of Large Scale Power Systems

The Eastern Interconnected power system in North America (depicted in Fig. 1), which stretches from the Rockies to the Atlantic Ocean including the eastern provinces of Canada to the North and Florida to the South but excluding the State of Texas, is the largest “machine” engineered by humankind. Every generator or synchronous machine connected to the system operates in synchronism with every other generator in the interconnection. The electrical speed or frequency chosen for this operation is sixty cycles per second, commonly referred to as sixty Hertz. Generators are devices that convert mechanical energy to electrical energy.