On-line Local Load Measurement Based Voltage Instability Prediction

Voltage instability is a major concern in operation of power systems and it is well known that voltage instability and collapse have led to blackout or abnormally low voltages in a significant part of the power system. Consequently, tracking the proximity of the power system to an insecure voltage condition has become an important element of any protection and control scheme. The expected time until instability is a critical aspect. There are a few energy management systems including voltage stability analysis function in the realtime environment of control centres, these are based on assumptions (such as offline models of the system loads) that may lead the system to an insecure operation and/or poor utilization of the resources. Voltage instability is driven by the load dynamics, and investigations have shown that load restoration due to the on-load tap changer (OLTC) action is the main cause of the voltage instability. However, the aggregate loads seen from bulk power delivery transformers are still the most uncertain power system components, due to the uncertainty of the participation of individual loads and shortcomings of the present approaches in the load modeling. In order to develop and implement a true on-line voltage stability analysis method, the on-line accurate modeling of the higher voltage (supply system) and the lower voltage level (aggregate load) based on the local measurements is required. In this research, using the changes in the load bus measured voltage and current, novel methods are developed to estimate the supply system equivalent and to identify load parameters. Random changes in the load voltage and current are processed to estimate the supply system Thevenin impedance and the composite load components are identified in a peeling process using the load bus data changes during a large disturbance in the system. The results are then used to anticipate a possible long-term voltage instability caused by the on-load tap changer operation following the disturbance. Work on the standard test system is provided to validate the proposed methods.