Estimation of Voltage Proles Along Power

Transmission Lines
Cansn Y. Evrenoso glu
Dept. of Electrical & Computer Eng.
Texas A&M University
College Station, Texas
Ali Abur
Dept. of Electrical & Computer Eng.
Northeastern University
Boston, Massachusetts
AbstractIn this paper, a new method which allows quick
calculation of voltage prole along transmission lines during
system transients, is presented. The main advantage of the
proposed method over existing techniques is that line parameters
and wave equations are not required in order to execute the
calculation once the method is implemented for a given system.
This is accomplished by developing a time series model for
voltages of intermediate points along the transmission lines in
terms of the terminal bus voltages. The approach is simple and
very easy to implement using an existing transients simulator
such as EMTP. One application of the method may be creation of
movies to illustrate the propagation of fault initiated transients in
a given system. The paper provides simulation results to illustrate
the performance of the proposed method.
I. INTRODUCTION
Power systems are routinely subjected to transients initiated
by faults, switching equipment, device failures, etc. Such
events may cause harm to the system due to abnormal voltages
and currents created during the transient. Electrical transients
programs are developed in order to be able to simulate bus
voltage transients in discrete time. These programs typically
formulate the solution using the nodal admittance matrix and
solve for bus voltages in discrete time. In assessing the tran-
sient voltage effects on equipment directly connected to system
buses, bus voltage transients will be sufcient. Although the
severest overvoltages usually occur at the line terminals during
switching operations or faults, there are such situations when
the highest overvoltage occurs at an intermediate point along
a transmission line rather than a line terminal. Line operation
with metal oxide surge arresters can lead such situations
during fault transients or line energizations. Determining the
location of the overvoltage is important in such cases due to
the insulation concerns. Thus, a method for voltage prole
calculation which provides the distribution of the voltage along
a transmission line during steady state or transient operation,
will have to be developed.
Another application which requires calculation of voltage
proles is the creation of transients movies to demonstrate the
wave propagation motion along the transmission lines. Calcu-
lating the prole at each time step allows the user to observe
the time variation of the travelling waves, which can be used
to produce movies of wave propagation in power systems.
Pioneering work in this area was carried out by Woodruff who
introduced transient sculptures and the concept of transient
movies [1] in the early 1930s. The Bewley diagrams [2] are
the rst attempts to capture the travelling wave behavior on
paper. Recently in [3] and [4] new methods for visualization
and animation of transients are proposed utilizing the voltage
prole information.
Electromagnetic transients simulators provide numerical so-
lutions for the voltages at buses in the power system. Once the
terminal voltages are known as a function of time, the voltage
prole along the transmission line can be obtained by using
travelling wave equations as illustrated in [5]. Another way to
obtain the voltage information at intermediate points along the
line is to represent the transmission line as several cascaded
line sections of small lengths.
In this paper, a different approach is taken in calculating the
voltage prole along transmission lines. Given the simulated
terminal bus voltages and an intermediate point voltage for
a transmission line during a transient, a time series model is
formed expressing the intermediate point voltage in terms of
the terminal bus voltages and their historical values. Model
parameters are estimated using the simulated values. Once the
model is developed and parameters identied, it is shown to
be valid for predicting the voltage at that intermediate point
resulting from any other type of fault in the system. The
procedure is repeated for a sufcient number of intermediate
points along the transmission line of concern. A discrete
approximation to the voltage prole is thus obtained for each
time step.
The proposed method allows quick calculation of the volt-
age prole and eliminates the need to work with wave equa-
tions and line parameters. It is particularly suitable for devel-
oping transient movies. Having access to an electromagnetic
transients simulation program is sufcient to be able to apply
this method. The paper describes the proposed methodology
rst, followed by various simulation results for different fault
cases.
II. METHODOLOGY
The motivation of this paper stems from the need to compute
voltage prole along transmission lines in discrete time. By
displaying these proles sequentially in time, movies of wave
propagation in large systems can be visualized. The compu-
tational complexity of solving for intermediate point voltages
along each transmission line makes the implementation of this
1694 142440178X/06/$20.002006IEEE PSCE2006
approach challenging. The method proposed in this section
aims to address this challenge. Existing method of obtaining
the voltage prole will be reviewed rst in order to illustrate
the relation between that and the proposed approach.
The most recent paper [5] explains how to obtain voltage
prole of a line in modal domain using travelling wave
equations. Aerial voltage at an intermediate point is calculated
as shown in Equation (1) in terms of backward and forward
travelling waves [5].
V
k
(t) =
b
k
(t) + f
k
(t)
2
(1)
where k is an intermediate point along a transmission line,
f
k
and b
k
are forward and backward travelling waves at that
intermediate point respectively which are expressed as follows:
f
jk
(t) =
m

x=1
c
k
f
jk,x
(t t) +
+ d
k
f
(j1)k,x
(t ) + e
k
f
(j1)k,x
(t t )
b
jk
(t) =
m

x=1
c
k
b
jk,x
(t t) +
+ d
k
b
(j+1)k,x
(t ) + e
k
b
(j+1)k,x
(t t )
where jk is an intermediate point along a transmission line,
m is the number of sections along the transmission line, t is
simulation step size, is travel time of the fastest frequency
component which propagates along the line, c
k
, d
k
and e
k
are
constants, (j 1)k and (j + 1)k are one section before
and after that intermediate point respectively. The details can
be found in [5].
Provided that an intermediate point voltage is calculated
from the summations of backward and forward travelling
waves in Equation (1), the following expression can be ob-
tained:
V
k
(t) =
m

x=1
c
k
(f
k,x
(t t) + b
k,x
(t t)) +
+ d
k
(f
(k1),x
(t ) + b
(k+1),x
(t )) +
+ e
k
(f
(k1),x
(t t ) + b
(k+1),x
(t t ))
(2)
where the summations of the rst term in Equation (2)
corresponds to 2V
k
(t t) by denition. It can be observed
from Equation (2) that the voltage at an intermediate point, k,
at a time instant is a function of its own history one time step
back and historical values of voltages at intermediate points
one section before, k 1, and one section after, k + 1, itself.
Based on this observation a time series model is proposed in
Equation (3) for the aerial voltage at an intermediate point
along a transmission line which is simulated as two sections.
Thus, there is only one intermediate point along the line and
k 1 corresponds to the sending end while k +1 corresponds
to the receiving end.
V
k
(t) = aV
k
(t t) +
+ b
1
V
k1
(t t) + b
2
V
k1
(t 2t) + +
+ b
N
V
k1
(t Nt) +
+ c
1
V
k+1
(t t) + c
2
V
k+1
(t 2t) + +
+ c
N
V
k+1
(t Nt) (3)
where N is the model order that corresponds to the number of
history terms of sending and receiving end voltages, M is the
model length that corresponds to the number of discrete time
steps of the simulation which are used to create the model.
Figure 1 demonstrates the voltage prole estimation procedure.
Fault
time
Aerial Voltage
Observation Prediction
Interval Interval
Fig. 1. Observation and prediction intervals
The simulation results are rst observed for a certain time
period, M discrete time steps. Then, for each time step the
intermediate voltage is dened according to the model in
Equation (3). Model order, N, is chosen enough to include the
necessary information. Based on Martis denition in Equation
(2), it is reasonable to choose a model order larger than
t +. Once the information is gathered for all time steps of
interest as shown in Equation (4), an over-determined system
is obtained since N is much smaller than M for the sake of
computational burden and numerical stability.
V
k
(t) = aV
k
(t t) +
+ b
1
V
k1
(t t) + b
2
V
k1
(t 2t) +
+ + b
N
V
k1
(t Nt) +
+ c
1
V
k+1
(t t) + c
2
V
k+1
(t 2t) +
+ + c
N
V
k+1
(t Nt)
V
k
(t + 1) = aV
k
(t + 1 t) +
+ b
1
V
k1
(t + 1 t) + b
2
V
k1
(t + 1 2t) +
+ + b
N
V
k1
(t + 1 Nt) +
+ c
1
V
k+1
(t + 1 t) + c
2
V
k+1
(t + 1 2t) +
+ + c
N
V
k+1
(t + 1 Nt)
.
.
.
V
k
(t + M) = aV
k
(t + M t) +
1695
+ b
1
V
k1
(t + M t) + b
2
V
k1
(t + M 2t) +
+ + b
N
V
k1
(t + M Nt) +
+ c
1
V
k+1
(t + M t) + c
2
V
k+1
(t + M 2t) +
+ + c
N
V
k+1
(t + M Nt) (4)
A more compact representation of the over-determined sys-
tem is in Equation (5) where the dimension of V
k
, the vector
of aerial voltage at intermediate point k is M, the dimension
of the V
k,k1,k+1
, the matrix of the history information is
M (2N + 1) an the dimension of , the model coefcients
vector is (2N + 1).
[V
k
]|
t+M
t
= [V
k,k1,k+1
] [] (5)
[] =

a b
1
b
N
c
1
c
N

T
The system of linear equations are solved by least squares
method and the model is analyzed by observing the normalized
residuals as shown in Equation (6). The same procedure is
followed for all other intermediate points and the voltage
prole is estimated using the predicted aerial voltages along
the transmission line.

= ([V
k,k1,k+1
]
T
[V
k,k1,k+1
])
1
[V
k,k1,k+1
]
T
[V
k
]|
t+M
t

V
k
= [V
k,k1,k+1
] [

]
r =
V
k

V
k
|V
k
|
(6)
III. SIMULATIONS
The 3 bus system in Figure 2 is studied. Transient sim-
ulations are carried out in ATP/EMTP program. Frequency
dependent model is used for transmission lines. Simulation
time interval, t, is chosen to be 50 s. Tower conguration
is same for both of the transmission lines and given in the
Appendix. Simulation time is 0.04 s (801 time steps) and the
faults occur at 0.02 s (401th time step). Sending, receiving
and intermediate point voltages of line AB are simulated.
70 mi
A B
C
100 mi
Fig. 2. Studied 3 bus system
MATLAB is used to process the simulation results and to
make the necessary calculations for voltage prole estimation.
Clarke transformation is used for modal decomposition of the
phase voltages. The travelling time, , of the transmission line
AB in aerial mode is calculated as = L/ = 538 s where
L = 100 mi is the total length of the line AB and =
1.85618 10
5
mi/s is the aerial mode velocity evaluated at
20 kHz. Travelling time, , corresponds approximately to 11
discrete time steps, since
t
= /t 10.77. The model
order is chosen to be 2 corresponding to 22 discrete time
steps.
The following two sections present the simulation results of
the two models for different intermediate points along the line
AB in Figure 2. In both sections a single phase to ground fault
at load bus, C, is taken into account during the model develop-
ment. Both models are developed by using the rst 450 time
steps of the simulations which is basically until 2.5 ms (50
time steps) after the fault occurrence. First, model verication
is demonstrated by estimating the voltage information (which
is used to create the model) at the intermediate point of line
AB. Then, the model is used to predict the rest of the voltage
information (from 451th time step to the end of the simulation)
at that intermediate point. The model is also used to forecast
the voltage at the intermediate point of line AB for different
types of faults at different locations along the neighboring
transmission line, CB. All the predictions are analyzed through
comparing the predicted results with the simulated results and
the normalized residual analyses are presented.
A. Model for the midpoint voltage
The model is developed for the middle point of line AB.
The model coefcients are presented in Figure 3. It is observed
that coefcients of sending end history terms corresponding to
[b
1
b
22
] are dominant in the model.
1 2 2324 45
1
0.8
0.6
0.4
0.2
0
0.2
0.4
0.6
0.8
1
Model coefficients for middle point
[a b
1
b
22
c
1
c
22
]
Fig. 3. Model coefcients for the middle point aerial voltage
Model is veried by analyzing the normalized residuals for
the estimation interval. The estimation of the aerial voltage in
Figure 4 produces a maximum normalized residual of 1.54
10
5
. The prediction of the aerial voltage in Figure 5 results
in a maximum normalized residual of 5.03 10
5
.
In order to test the model for a different fault type at a
different location along the neighboring line, CB, a three phase
to ground fault is assumed to occur at 20 miles away from bus
1696
23 50 100 150 200 250 300 350 400 450
4
3
2
1
0
1
2
3
4
x 10
5 Simulated() and estimated(+) aerial voltages at middle point
Discrete Time Steps
V
o
l
t
a
g
e

[
V
]
Fig. 4. Model verication: estimated and simulated aerial voltages at the
midpoint of line AB for the rst 450 time steps
451 501 551 601 651 701 751 801
4
3
2
1
0
1
2
3
4
x 10
5 Simulated() and predicted(+) aerial voltages at middle point
Discrete Time Steps
V
o
l
t
a
g
e

[
V
]
Fig. 5. Model verication: predicted and simulated aerial voltages at the
midpoint of line AB from 451th to 801th time step
C. The maximum normalized residual of the aerial voltage
prediction in Figure 6 is 9.76 10
5
.
B. Model for an intermediate point voltage
The model is created for an intermediate point, 75 miles
away from bus A, along transmission line AB. Figure 7
presents the model coefcients for aerial mode voltages.
The normalized residuals are analyzed for the estimation
interval. The estimation of the aerial voltage in Figure 8 has a
maximum normalized residual of 0.4610
5
. The prediction of
the aerial voltage in Figure 9 produces a maximum normalized
residual of 1.91 10
3
.
The model is tested to predict the aerial voltage at 75 miles
away from bus A for a different type of fault at a different
location. A three phase to ground fault is assumed to occur at
bus B. The maximum normalized residual of the aerial voltage
prediction in Figure 10 is 9.23 10
3
.
23 101 201 301 401 501 601 701 801
4
3
2
1
0
1
2
3
4
x 10
5 Simulated() and predicted(+) aerial voltages at middle point
Discrete Time Steps
V
o
l
t
a
g
e

[
V
]
Fig. 6. Model verication: predicted and simulated aerial voltages at the
midpoint of line AB during a three phase to ground fault at load bus,C
1 2 2324 45
0.6
0.4
0.2
0
0.2
0.4
0.6
0.8
Model coefficients for intermediate point
[a b
1
b
22
c
1
c
22
]
Fig. 7. Model coefcients for aerial voltage at the intermediate point 75
miles away from bus A
IV. CONCLUSIONS AND FUTURE WORK
A novel approach for determining the voltage prole of
transmission lines during system transients is proposed in this
paper. Unlike the existing techniques, the new method utilizes
time series models to estimate the voltage at intermediate
points along transmission lines. These models are formed
for each intermediate point separately. Once the models are
identied and their parameters are estimated they are used
to predict the intermediate point voltages during system tran-
sients. Simulation results indicate good correlation between the
voltage proles obtained by using the existing and proposed
methods.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This material is based upon work supported by NSF under
Grant No. ESC-0300071.
1697
23 50 100 150 200 250 300 350 400 450
4
3
2
1
0
1
2
3
4
x 10
5 Simulated() and estimated(+) aerial voltages at inter. point
Discrete Time Steps
V
o
l
t
a
g
e

[
V
]
Fig. 8. Model verication: estimated and simulated aerial voltages at 75
miles away from bus A for the rst 450 time steps
451 501 551 601 651 701 751 801
4
3
2
1
0
1
2
3
4
x 10
5 Simulated() and predicted(+) aerial voltages at inter. point
Discrete Time Steps
V
o
l
t
a
g
e

[
V
]
Fig. 9. Model verication: predicted and simulated aerial voltages at 75
miles away from bus A from 451th to 801th time step
REFERENCES
[1] L.F. Woodruff, Transmission line transients in motion movies, AIEE
Transactions, Vol. 57, July 1938, pp.391-400
[2] L.V. Bewley, Travelling waves on transmission systems, John Wiley &
Sons, NY, 1951
[3] C.Y. Evrenosoglu, A. Abur and E. Akleman, Visualization of electromag-
netic transients along transmission lines, IEEE PSCE, October 2004
[4] C.Y. Evrenosoglu, E. Akleman, Ozan

Onder

Ozener and A. Abur Two
methods for travelling wave visualization in multi-phase power systems:
Painted transients and Animated Pipes, IPST, June 2005
[5] L. Marti and H.W. Dommel, Calculation of voltage proles along
transmission lines, IEEE Transactions on Power Delivery, Vol. 12, No.
2, Apr. 1997, pp. 993-998
23 101 201 301 401 501 601 701 801
4
3
2
1
0
1
2
3
4
x 10
5 Simulated() and predicted(+) aerial voltages at inter. point
Discrete Time Steps
V
o
l
t
a
g
e

[
V
]
Fig. 10. Model verication: predicted and simulated aerial voltages at 75
miles away from bus A during a three phase to ground fault at bus B
Ph. Skin R [/mi] IX X D [in] Hor. [ft] Vtower [ft]
0 0.5 6.74 4 0 0.36 45 114
0 0.5 6.74 4 0 0.36 75 114
1 0.5 0.0984 4 0 1.196 60 101
2 0.5 0.0984 4 0 1.196 45 80
3 0.5 0.0984 4 0 1.196 75 80
Ph. Vmid [ft] Separ. [in] [deg] NB
0 114 0 0 0
0 114 0 0 0
1 101 18 0 2
2 80 18 0 2
3 80 18 0 2
APPENDIX
ATP CONDUCTOR AND TOWER CONFIGURATION DATA
FOR A 220 KV TRANSMISSION LINE
Cansn Y. Evrenoso glu (S00) obtained his B.S. and M.S. degrees
from

Istanbul Teknik

Universitesi, Turkey in 1998 and 2001 respec-
tively. Since 2002, he has been pursuing my Ph.D. degree at the
Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Texas A&M
University, College Station, Texas. email:cyevrenosoglu@ieee.org
Ali Abur (F03) obtained his B.S. degree from Ortado gu Teknik

Universitesi, Turkey in 1979, and both his M.S. and Ph.D. degrees
from The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio, in 1981 and 1985
respectively. He was a faculty member at Texas A&M University
until November 2005 when he joined the faculty of Northeastern
University as a Professor and Chair of the Electrical and Computer
Engineering Department. email:abur@ece.neu.edu
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