IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER SYSTEMS,

VOL. I S , NO.

I, PEBRUARY 2000

177

Multicontingency Steady State Security Evaluation

Using Fuzzy Clustering Techniques
M. A. Matos, Membec IEEE, N. D. Hatziargyriou, SeniorMembes IEEE, and J. A. P e p s Lopes, SeniorMembec IEEE

AbslracCThis paper provides a description of a new approach

for steady statc security evaluation, using fuzzy nearest prototype
classifiers.Thc basic method has an off-line training phase, used to
design the fast classifiers for on-line purposes, allowing more than
the two traditional security classes. A battery of thcse fuzzy classifiers, valid for a specific configuration of the nctwork, is adopted
to produce a global evaluation for all relevant single contingencies. An important feature of tbis approach is that it selects automatically the most appropriate number of security clusters for
each selected contingency. Natural language labeling is also used
to produce standardized sentences about the security level of the
system, improving in this way the communication process between
the system and the operator. The paper is completed by an example
on a realistic model of the Hellenic interconnected power system,
where seven contingencies were simulated.
Index Terms-Contingencies, EMS, fuzzy classifiers, on-line
evaluation, steady state security assessment.

I. INTRODUCTION

OWADAYS, power systems are more and more exploited

near their limits of operation due to the ever-increasing
economical and environmental pressures. Because of that, fast
and reliable security assessment turned into a key issue to assure
the operation of the system. Steady state security evaluation enables us to detect, through simulation, any potential overload of
a system branch or an out-of-limit voltage following a given list
of contingencies.
Due to the large system size, a steady state security analysis
based on mnltiple powcr flows for all credible outages, at frequent intervals, becomes an impossible task due to the associated computational burden.
The general approach adopted to overcome this difficulty is
based on the decomposition of the analysis into Contingency
definition, selection and evaluation [I]. Separate analysis is then
performed for each sub-task, employing different degrees of
modeling detail. However, the drastic decrease in the computational burden achievcd may not be sufficient for on-line purposes, or may require an excessive level of simplification in the
models, namely in the contingency selection task. Characterization of emergency operating conditions, i.e., states of the power

M. A. Mntas kind J. A. Pqns Lopes are witli INESC, Apartado 4433, 4007
Port" Codex, Portugal and FEUP, Rua dos Rrages, 4000 Parto, Portugal ( c - m t d
mmatos@inescn.pt: jpI@riff.ie.up.pt).
N. D. tlataiargyriou is with Electric Power Systems Lllboratoly, NTUA, 42
Putissian m.. 10682 Athens. Greece (c-mail: nhlpowerece.olua.p~)).
Publisher Item Identifier S 08~5-895U(oo)Ul869-I.

system where violations of load or voltage limits may occur, can

be performed using security indices [I] such as

i=l

where V, is the voltage magnitude at load bus i ,

is the overvoltage or undervoltage limit at load busbar i , wi is a weighting
factor and 111 is the number of load busbars. Weighting exponent
m aims at reducing masking effects.
A security index related to overload may also be used. A possible choice is

where S, is branch k: load, S,, is the overload limit, Xi; is a

weighting factor and n b is the number of branches.
Usually classification of a given post-contingency state
results from the comparison of the security indices' values with
utility defined thresholds, leading to a securehsecure crisp
classification.
In order to overcome the huge computational requirements
involved with this task, a large effort has been devoted to the
application of other type of techniques. In the last years, Expert System, Pattern Recognition, Decision Trees, and Neural
Networks methodologies have been applied to the security assessment problem [2]-[10]. Generally, these methods hew an
off-line training phase, used to design fast classifiers for on-line
security assessment.
In two previous papers, [I11 and [12], the authors outlined a
fast fuzzy classifier and a natural language labeling scheme and
their application to a real system. Natural language labels were
used to produce standardized sentences about the security level
of the system [S), 1111,
In the present paper, a detailed case-study with a globel
steady state security evaluation analysis is presented, in order
to demonstrate features previously outlined. This evaluation is
valid for a specific configuration (topology) of the network, for
which the most important contingencies have been simulated.
Once designed, the fuzzy classifiers permit a rapid on-line
assessment of a new load and generation scenario, comparable
in speed to ANN and related techniques, but producing more
and better structured information to the operators.

SCHEME
11. BASICFUZZYCLASSIFICATION
Although already explained in previous papers [l I], [IZ],in
this section wc briefly outline the main steps and features of the
fuzzy classification scheme. These main stages are as follows:

0885-8950/00$10.00 B 2000 IEEE

IBEETI<ANSACTIONSON POWER

178

a) Training set generation (including a two class security

classification):
b) Feature selection;
c) Classifier design:
d) Classifier performance evaluation.
When dealing with several contingencies, this scheme needs
to be repeatcd for cvery selected contingency.

sysrms, VOL. is. NO.

I , P ~ B R U A R Y2000

upriori security information. In this sensc, it is an unsupervised

process, although class labeling and feature selection both use
the initial classification information.
Fuzzy clustering is the process of obtaining a fuzzy partition
of a given set of n objects in a number c of classes. Each object
X r has a degrcc of membership i i i h to each class i . The following conditions apply:

A. Training Set Generation

First, a large number of characteristic operating points is generated off-line and their levcl of steady state security is evaluated
(and classified) for the contingency under study.
The training set should contain a significant number of points
(both secure and insecure oncs). Two other main concerns are:
diversity of load levels and operating situations, and adopting
typical utility procedures.
The output of this phase is a set of operating points, classified for each contingency according to the utility rules. Each
operating point is characterized by a number of precontingency
attributes, such as load level, voltages in PV buses and active
generations, usually available in the SCADA. These are the inexpensive attributes, as no additional calculations are needed to
obtain them.

H. Feature Selectiun
In this phase, each contingency is treated separately and a
reduced set of variables is selected for each one in ordcr to be
used later by the corresponding classification structures. A usual
procedure consists of exploiting the crisp securetinsecure classification provided by the conventional approach and evaluate
for each variable the well-known F i~~easurc
of scparability. If
M h ( S ) and r r h k ( I ) are the mean values of variable k in the secure and insecure classes, respectively, and ck (X) and ck ( / ) are
the corresponding standard deviations, P is defined by expression 13)
, ,

Fk = / % ( S ) - m(1)l
Uh(S)

+ nh(q

(3)

In principle, variables with greater F havc more discriminating power, and are chosen as relevant attributes.
The procedure described below uses the F measure and correhition information (only to avoid data repetitions), but final
selection of the attributes is related to their performance in the
security problem.
a) Calculate the F value for each variable, using ( 3 ) :
b) Calculate correlations betwcen variables with greater P
values. For each set of completely correlated variables,
eliminate all but one; and
c) Use a forward selection technique 011 the remaining variables, by order of (heir F value, to select the relevant
attributes.
C. Classijer Design
Initially a classification structure is obtained for each contingency, using the most relevant attributes identified in the
previous step. Then a fuzzy clustering algorithm is performed,
trying to identify classes in each training set, without using the

Note that, in general, an object will belong, in the fuzzy

sense, to more than one class, with intensities determined by the
membership values. This allows a more flexible classification
scheme, as will be seen later in this paper. In the crisp case, (4)
is replaced by ziikc{O, I), metaning that each point belongs to
one and only one cluster.
Best results so far were obtained with the Bezdeks fuzzy
c-means algorithm 1131, using the Euclidean norm. The algorithm uses iteratively expressions for the prototypes (or clusters
centers) vi (7) aud degrees of membership u i k (8):

or
uih

= 1 and uji: = 0

all j

# k , if dii, = 0

(8b)

where mr[ I,CO) is an weighting exponent and ( d i h ) is the

square distance from zk to the prototype of cluster IC. Once fixed
c and m,, and starting values for every u i k ,thc algorithm proceeds, using expressions(7) and (8) iteratively until member.
ship values stabilize.
the
ofthc
ofclasses can not be determined
in advance, a trial-and-error procedure is generally used, supported by validity indices [131-[151.
Interesting values for security assessment purposes are in the
rangec =2-6. In previous approaches [SI, [I 11, standardvalidity
indiccs wcre used to select the best c .
However, due to the special characteristics of the security
problem, testing on the adequacy of the classes, regarding the
n priori classification, seems to be a better decision attribute.
The new proccdure has the following stcps:
a) Fix a value for c and perform the clustcriug;
b) Assign each point in the training set to the cluster to which
it has the greatest degree of membership;
c) Label each cluster as secure or insecure according to
the majority of its points reference classification;
~~

MATOS e l ai.:MULTICONTINGENCY STEADY STATE SBCUIUTY EVALUATION USING FUZZY CLUSTERIN0 TECHNIQUES

d) Count the misclassiiies points nmc,i.e., secure points

in insecure clusters and vice-versa. Divide the result for
the total number of points n to obtain the adequacy index:

It is important to stress that this auxiliary test for selecting

the best number of classes should not bc confused with a
traditional performance test. In fact, the benefit of considering
partitioned membership and more than two classes includes
the case of having intermediate classes of critical points that
are close to limits. Standard error calculations in those cases
would lead to erroneous conclusions about the performance of
the classification.
In order to choose the number of classes, we propose the following proceduse:
a) Perform the clustering for c = 2-6.In each case, calculate
the value of a using (9);
b) Choose the partition corresponding to the hest index.
Once obtained the final partition, the values of the cluster
prototypes TI;, i = 1 . . . c are saved for use in the classifier.
Each class is labeled following an inspection of the points in the
training set that have greater degrees of membership to the class.
Besides the two traditional labels, designations like Most Secure, Very Insecure, or Critical can he used where justified.

D. On-line Classification
For a new operating point, use of (8) gives the degrees of
membershio to each class with verv little comuutation cffort.
The new point is then assigned to the class corresponding to
the greatest membership, which means that a nearest prototype
principle is applied.
Note that the use of the whole set of relevant degrecs of
membership gives more information to the operators than a
single crisp classification, namely in critical operating points. It
is also possible to produce synthetic natural language descriptions using linguistic modifiers [14]. Due to space limitations,
this feature is not developed here.

111. GLOBAL
PROCEDURE
A. Overview

179

B. Contingency Selection

This stage aims at reducing the number of critical contingencies to be evaluated explicitly in real-time for a basc case. Contingency ranking methods, expert system techniques exploiting
previous human and analytical knowledge about behavior, and
also neural networks approaches h w e becn used [91, I.101 for
this purpose. The present paper does not address this issue.
C . Global Evaluation of a New Operating Point

As seen before, a fuzzy classification of anew operating point

is produced for each selected contingency. To obtain a global
evaluation, two classifications arc produced:
1) Worst-Case Class$cation: Thc operating point is represented by its worse classification, i.e., the one with greater degree of membership to insecure or very insecure classes. The
procedure is as follows:
a) For each contingency, sum the degrees oC membership to
all the insecure classes;
b) Take the greater of thc sums as the global degree of membership to the insecure state, t l r n d e c .The global conservative security evaluation of the new point is the fiiszy
worst-case classification (uscc = 1 - I I I ~ ~ ~ ~ ) :
uJSecure

+ ur,,,,/Insecure.

(10)

2) ExpectedFuzzy Class$carion: An auxiliary measure can

be obtained if a probability of occurrence p , is known for each
contingency z. In that case, thc expected fuzzy classification is
calculated using:
-

uip z

TI?,
.TI(:
U
GP
?
.

i Z 1 L . C

(11)

pz

where U$) is the degree of nieiuhership of point p to class i , in

contingency z .
If the classes are not the same in every partial study, an nggregation scheme must he applied to obtain an equal number
of corresponding classes. This is easy if there are only labeling
subdivisions, such as Very Insecure and lnsecurc for a contingency A and only insecure for a contingency B. In that case,
the two classes of A should he aggregated as Insecure (adding
the degrees of membership). In most heterogeneous cases, the
aggregation may need to he extended up to thc two fundamental
classes. It is to stress that the Expccted Fuzzy Classification is
intended to be used in combination with the Worst-Casc Classification, to help clarify the extent ofinsecurity. In no case should
be used as the sole security classification.

The fuzzy classification model described in the previous section addresses only one contingency at a time. A global steady
state security evaluation for a given topological configuration
of the network requires aggregation of results from studies that
cover the most important contingencies.
IV. EXAMPLE
More general classifiers, capable of dealing with different
Next we describe results obtained with a specific topological
network configurations, could possibly he developed using the
of the Hellenic power system, with scven simnconfiguration
same principle. This would require a training set including all
the interesting configurations, which was not done in this paper. lated contingencics.
The global evaluationof anew operating point begins with the
process of contingency selection, proceeds by fuzzy classifying A. Case Study
the new point regarding each one of the contingencies and ends
A realistic model of the Hellenic interconnected power
by producing a final global classification.
system has been used as our study case network. This model

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IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWBR SYSTEMS. VOL IS, NO. I, FEBRUARY ZOO0

Substation

Thermal power station

I
Hydro power station

Fig. I. Network map (simpliiicd)

consists of 240 buses, 267 lines and 50 eqoivalent generators.

The network map is depicted in Fig. 1 .

the week, these load classes exhibit 24-hour load curves with
relatively small deviations around average mean values. The following proccdure is used to determine the loading conditions for
the learning set.
R. Of-Line Work
a) Based on nominal 24-hour load curves for residential, inMost part of the work is done off-line. This include training
dustrial, and commercial loads, a composite 24-hour h a d
set generation and classifier design.
curve was determined for each substation of the system.
1 ) Training Set Generation: The Learning Set (LS) for each
b) Assuming that hourly loads of each substation can vary
contingency contains a large nnmber of operating points (OP).
within i10% of their nominal values the composite loa,ds
For each OP the selected contingency is simulated using a coti-
were modified using a random number generator.
strained load flow program and the results are further processed
c) Based on the modified composite load curves of the snbto supply the value of the security indices and the list of the
station a composite 24-hour load curve for the system was
attribute variables. Since it was not possible to acquire a largc
determined.
number of operating states, ii large part of our cffort was cond) The five hours with the largest system loads were selected
centrated in sctting up a realistic LS.
to provide five loading conditions. Each loading contliThe most important input variables in the constrained load
tion is described by the substation hourly loads correflow program are the loads at all PQ buses and the active producsponding to that specific hour. Low load situations are not
tion and the voltage at all PV buses. A classic approach followed
addressed in the present paper, but they could be also irnin modeling loads for practical use is the component based
portant and will be considered in future developments.
method. Accordingly, compositc load models are developed by
e) Steps b, c and d were repeated 80 times resulting
detailed modeling of the distribution feeders. The load at each
400 loading conditions, 284 of which were feasible.
substation can bc considered as the summation of various load
Having determined the load, the real power supplied by each
classes (e.g., residential, industrial, commercial, etc.). As shown generator bus is calculated using approximate participation facby measurements for specific seasonal conditions and days of tors. This information is obtained from an off-line application

MATOS et al.: MULTICONTINGENCY STEADY STATE SECUIIITY EVALUATION USING FUZZY CLUSTERING TECHNIQUBS

TABLE L
GENPRAL
CONTINOENCYDATA

TABIS? IT1
REST CLUSTEI<S POR EACIICONTINGRNCY
(VALIJE OF YHF ADEQIIACYINuBx)

TABLE 11
RELEVANTATTRIBUTE

Line Out

181

TABLE I V
CLUSTER LAUELINO

Attribute 1

Attribute 2

P2

V23

189 or 98
3.46 or 71

of the economic dispatch program and incorporales the operating strategies adopted by the system managers. This means
that thermal units are used to meet the base load while hydro
and diesel units meet the pcaks.
The constrained load flow program used for the contingency evaluation allows the simulation of automatic on-line
tap changing in order to control voltages within specified
limits at the transmission transformers sending and receiving
buses. Thus, once these target voltage limits are specified, the
transformer taps are provided by the program. In addition, thc
program accepts the setting of limits to the reactive power
produced by the generators. A fixed network topology is
assumed in all the studies.
Finally, for each OP the index (2) is calculated for outages
of major transmission lines. The OP are accordingly classified
as secure or insecure depending on whether the Overload index
J ~ 1 . n is respectively smaller or greater than a utility-like defined threshold (for this study) of 550.
In a previous paper [12], the case of voltage limit violations
was also addressed, but it is not treated here to avoid obscuring
the example with overwhelming results.
2) Class@er Design: The general data related to the seven
simulated contingencies is depicted in Table I. Probabilities in
the last column are estimated (not real reliability values).
Analysis with the F measure of separability conducted to the
identification of ranked list of attributes by the greater E values.
After the exclusion of correlated variables, two attributes were
selectedfor each contingency, as shown inTable 11. Experiments
with more than two attributes lead not to better results than the
ones presented in the paper.
Results from clustering with the selected variables for c = 2-6
are displayed in Table 111.
Variables P2, P6 and P7 are injectedpowers in PV buses (hydrostations that usually cover peek load), and V5, V6, V23 and
V31 are precontingency voltages in PV buses.

According to the values of the adequacy index a, the better

choices for clustering are: three classes for contingencies 168
and 98, five classes for contingency 8, and six classes for the
remaining contingencies.
Examination of the dcgrees of mcmbership and security inn each cluster permitted to label the corresponding
dices J ~ v in
classes, as shown in Table IV, where Sec and Ins stand respectivel! for sccnre and insecure, and V. and Mt. correspond to very
and I n w .
l h e prototypes (centers of clusters) for each are not shown
here, due to space limitations.

C. On-Line Work
I ) Partial Classification: Tablc V depicts fuzzy classifications of five example OP (1, 78, 171, 207, and 232) regarding
each of the selccted contingencies.
Note that only the rclevant degrces of membership are included. Classification o l a uew opcrating state regarding a specific contingency is straightforward, using (8).
Calculations are vcry fast, and this classification i s also inore
meaningful than only saying the point is secure. Howevcr, if a
crisp classification is essential, it is always easy to obtain one
by applying the maximum rule to the degrces of mcmbership.
Interpretation of results is easy. For instancc, Take OP 232
(contingency 71) and OP 78 (contingency 8). Thc following
conclusions may he drawn:

O P 232 is (1.66 Secure and 0.31

Insecure in c o n t i r i y r n c ~71
01 78 i s 0.73 1n.seccivc ond 0.25
V eru Iriseciirr iii contin,yency 8.

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IEEE TIIANSACTIONS ON POWER SYSTEMS, VOL. 15. NO. I, FEBRUARY 2000

TABLE V

TABLE VI1
GLOBALSECUKITY BVALUATIONS FOR EXAMPLE
OF

SECURITY INDlCIiS FOR RXAMPLE OPERATING POINTS

OP
1
78

Contingency
168
189
3
46
71
8
98
0.99IcZI 1.0/c4 I.O/cZ l.O/cZ I.O/cZ 10.99/c41 I.O/c3
0.85Ic3 10.99/cZ I0.87/c3 I0.99/c3 I l.O/c3 I0.73/c3 I0.86/c2

I
I

TABLE VI
SMCURITY INDtCES FOR EXAMPLE OPERATING POINTS

Fuzzy Global Classifications

Worst-case
Expected Value

from OP 232 (occasionally insecure), hut should not be used

as the main global security classifier, due to possihlc masking
effects.
V. CONCLUSIONS

This means that OP 232 is not completely safe regarding contingency 71 (according to the on-line classifier) and that OP 78
is definitively not secure regarding contingency 8. Other poinls
have almost crisp classifications, which means that they belong
clearly to one of the identified classes.
For comparison purposes, the real values of the J M ~ , , indices
(off-line calculations) are shown in Table VI.
As seen in the table, the fast classifications delivered by
the classifiers agree in general with the conventional time
consuming security indiccs. OP 1 is always very far from the
threshold 550, and is correctly classified in Most or very secure
classes, with a high degree o i membership. The reverse for OP
171, which always violates the threshold by a large margin.
More interesting, however, is OP 207, which is near 550 in
contingencies 168, 189, and 98. In twu of the cases (168 and
98) the point has a fuzzy classification that shows it is in the
border between security and insecurity, Regarding contingency
189, the point is correctly assigned to a secure class, but in
an environment where three very or most secure classes exist,
showing that it is not far from insecurity.
2 ) Globnl Classi$cation: Aggregation of results from the
partial studies, made according to Section 111-C is also not time
consuming. For n c contiugcncies, u~~~~~
and u,~,,, calculations
take between 0 and c . nc sums (typically around n e ) and one
suhtmction; additional calculations for the expected value take
2 nc sums, nc mnltiplications and one division; Worst-case
classification takes only n c comparisons. So, the entire process
is suitable for on-line purposes.
Using the values of Table I (probabilities) and Table V (partial fuzzy classifications), the final results in Table VI1 are ohtained, both for the Worst-case and the Expectcd Value procedures. Note that the Worst-case classification is pessimistic,
which seems essential for security assessment studies. The EV
can be useful to distinguish OP like 171 (ccrtainly insecure)

The approach described in this paper is a complete procedure for a global steady-state security assessment (exccpt contingency selection). A fast way of evaluating the security of a
new state was presented, including aggregation procedures to
draw global conclusions for the selected set of contingencies.
An important issue is the flexibility and increased accuracy
of using more than lwo classcs and natural language synthetic
descriptions for the classification scheme.
Results from a real system of large dimension showed thc
feasibility of the approach for a given topological configuration
of the system. The possibility of extending this methodology to
several system topologies needs to be investigated in the future.
ACKNOWLEDGMENI
The authors would like to thank Dr. M. T. Ponce LeXo, of
INESC, for her collaboration in the clustering studies
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MATOS CI (61.: MULTICONTINGi3NCY STEADY STAT@ SECUIIITY EVALUATION USING FUZZY CLUSTERING TF.CI1NIQUBS

I81

[ I I1 M. A. Matas, N. Haukirgyriou, J. A. Peps Lopes, and G. C. Contanis, N. D. Hatziargyriou (SM) receiveti tile El.Eng., M.Sc., and Ph.D. degrees. He
Fnzq analysis of steady-stiite SCCUrity far On-line assessment, in P r o ~ is ti Professor in the Power Divisiun or thc Electrical Engineering Department
ceedings IEEE/NTUA Athem Power Tech, Athens, 1993, pp. 280-284.
of NTUA. His research interests include inodeling iind digital techniques Tor
[I21 M. A. Matas, N. Hatriargyriau, and J. A. Pepas Lopes, Fuzzy steady power system analysis and control. He is a member of CIGRE and Technical
state security assessmeill, in Proc. lREE/SPT Stockholm Power Tech, Chamber of Greece.
Stockholm, 1995, pp. 635-640.
[I31 1. C. Betdek,Pallern Recognition with Fuzz), Obiecrive Fununcriorr Alxnrilhms, N Y Plenum Press, 1981.
[I41 N. R. Pal and J. C. Bezdek, On duster validity for the fuzzy c-means
model, IBEE Trans. on Fuzzy Syrfemr, vol. 3, no. 3, Aug. 1995.
[15] N.R. Pal iind 1. C. Bezdek, Corrcction to On clnster validity for the
fuzzy c-means model, IEEE Trans. on Fuzzy ,Sysfews, vol. 5, no. I ,
Feb. 1997.

J. A. Pegas Lopes (SM) received the EI.Eng. and Ph.D. degrees in aggregation.
He is tin Assistant Professor in thc Faculty of Engineeriog at the University
M. A. Matas (M) received tlic E1.Eng. and P1i.D. dcgreer in Aggregation. He is of Porto, Portugal. He is dno an Assistant Coordinator of the Power Systems
an Associate Pmfcssor in the Faculty of Enginccring at the University of POITO, Unit at INESC. His research interests are powcr system security assessment
Portugal, iindtheCoordin~t~rufthcPower
SystemsUnitatINESC. His research and disperscd generation system analysis. He is a member of several CIGRE
interests include fuzzy modeling of power systems and decision-aid methods.

Task-Forces.