2004 IEEE Intemational Conference on Electric Utility Deregulation, Restructuring and Power Technologies (DRPT2004)April 2004 Hong Kong
SMALL SIGNAL STABILITY ANALYSIS AND CONTROL
IN MARKET ENVIRONMENT
Xu Dongjie, Wang Peng, H e Renmu, Xu Tao
Abstract-- In the deregulated power industry, the
increasing number of power marketers and independent
power generators increases the variability of power flow
patterns in the transmission system, thereby reducing the
ability of transmission planners and operators to predict the
critical operating conditions and limits. Consequently, the
small signal stability problem becomes more complex. And
the existing standard methods and tools for small-signal
stability are not able to perform security analysis in the
claimed response time required for online use. Under this
background, we propose a novel approach for power system
small signal stability analysis and control which combines
the state-of-the-art small signal analysis tools, data mining,
and the synchronized phasor measurement techniques.
Index Terms-- deregulated power industry,
phasor measurement placement, small signal stability,
support vector machine.
I. INTRODUCTION
I n the deregulated power industry, the increasing
number of power marketers and independent power
generators increases the variability of power flow pattems
in the transmission system, thereby reducing the ability of
transmission planners and operators to predict the critical
operating conditions and limits. In an electric power
system, oscillations between interconnected synchronous
generators are an inherent phenomenon. Oscillations
associated with a single generator or a single plant are
called local modes or plant modes, and their frequency is
usually in the range of 0.7 to 2.0 Hz. Those oscillations
can be analyzed and controlled comparatively easily. A
different type of oscillations involves groups of
generators. These oscillations are called inter-area
oscillations or inter-area modes. Their frequency is
usually in the range from 0.1 to 0.8 Hz. To study these
oscillations, generally a detailed model of the whole
interconnected power system is required. In large
interconnected systems, there can generally be many such
modes, each involving a number of generators. If the
power systems do not have enough damping, when
subject to some small or large disturbance, the systems
may lose stability.
This work was supportcd in part by the Promoting Program for
Young Enginecrs of Power Grid, P.R.C, (SPQJKJ-02-09)
Xu Dongjic is with the school of Electrical Engineering, North China
Electric Power University, Beijing, China (e-mail:xudj@263.nct).
Wang Peng is with the school of Elcctrical Engineering, North China
Electric Power University, Beijing, China (c-mail: wphbdl@263.net).
0-7803-8237-4/04/$17.0002004IEEE
322
To get an insight into the dynamic behavior of the
system, time domain simulation as well as eigenvalue
calculation can be carried out usually engineers prefer
investigations in the time domain however, eigenvalues
provided some additional information making this
technique more suitable for small signal stability
assessment.
One of the drawbacks of time domain simulation is that
often system inherent modes are not visible in the plots. it
is due to the fact that simulated disturbances excite
usually only a few modes. The modal analysis allows a
more general conclusion since eigenvalues and
eigenvectors are calculated. However the modal analysis
is restricted to linear system, and thus the nonlinear
equations of power system must be linearized.
Today modal analysis allows treating real problems in
large power grids. Although with the improving
performance of modem computers, the computation of the
small signal stability is a time consuming process for large
networks, which includes the load flow calculation, the
linearization at operating point, and the eigenvalue
computation.
In market environment, oscillatory stability assessment
itself is aggravated because of two major reasons. Firstly,
oscillatory stability cannot be rated on the base of local
information. It normally requires a full and realistic
dynamic model of the whole interconnected power system.
Therefore, the exchange of information between utilities
gains in importance. On the other hand, this is
increasingly hindered by many of the independent power
producers behaving restrictively hiding their data.
Secondly, the existing standard methods and tools for
small-signal stability are not able to perform security
analysis in the claimed response time required for online
use.
An alternative method is to use a intelligent method
such as ANN and data mining trained with off-line data
for different load flow and system conditions. by using
intelligent method, a fast computation of the eigenvalues
is possible"' '' 'I.
11. INTELLIGENT METHOD FOR OSCILLATORY
STABILITY ASSESSMENT
In our study, small signal stability assessment bases on
the prediction of eigenvalues online. The direct
calculation of eigenvalues is not applicable not only
because of the computation time, but primarily because of
the unavailability of a complete set of system parameters
2004 IEEE International Conference on Electric Utility Deregulation, Restructuring and Power Technologies (DRPT2004)April 2004 Hong Kong
and up-to-date load flow information.
Under this background, we propose a novel approach
for power system small signal stability analysis and
control which combines the state-of-the-art small signal
analysis tools, data mining, and the synchronized phasor
measurement techniques.
The concept of phasors is very useful in describing the
behavior of a power system in its steady state as well as in
transient state. Although phasors are better understood as
representing a steady state sinusoidal waveform, phasor
movements can be used to derive a variety of information
about the transient state of a power system. Phasor
measurement technologies have undergone many changes,
first with the advent of digital electronic systems and then
with the increasing need for synchronized phasor
measurements at different points of large power systems.
Synchronized phasor measurements have a huge
potential of application in power systems.
To name, a few applications are:
Accurate Measurement of Frequency and
Magnitude of Voltages and Currents.
State Estimation
Prediction of Instability
Adaptive Relaying
Centralized Control and Monitoring
In our studies, PMUs are used to determine power grid
topology and estimate load flow conditions, etc. That is to
say, when we get some important information, such as
active power of generators, lines transmission power, etc.
We can use intelligent method to predict (forecast) the
small signal stability.
Machine learning algorithms, like Artificial Neural
Networks (ANN) and data mining, are promising
alternatives to methods that require extraction models
andor knowledge of the data. They are able to handle
large amount of data and can deal with non-linear systems.
Because of these characteristics, machine learning
algorithms are interesting candidates for the automatic
processing of environmental data, which is necessary in
emergency situations.
Neural Networks (NN) are highly parallel models
which have advantages of being flexible and can be used
to extract (to learn) complex linear and nonlinear
relationships from the data. NNs have two levels of
training:
1) The first level of training is to train the NN weights
from the training data set. A number of automatic
algorithms are available to train the weights, the most
commonly used is known as feed forward back-
propagation (BP) algorithm. The BP algorithm is
designed to minimize the error through an iterative
process which can be visualized as similar to the iterative
method of solving a load flow. The drawback of this
algorithm is that the initial NN weights are randomized.
For the system under study this training algorithm may
give the global or any of a number of local minima
323
depending on the randomized initial weights. So in NN
parameter optimization studies the results of a number of
forecasts need to be averaged to allow for the random
differences in the accuracy of individual forecasts.
2) The second level of training is to optimize the
parameters that describe the NN structure. These
parameters include the number of hidden layers, the
number of neurons in each hidden layer, the momentum,
the leaming rate and others such as weight decay
parameters. The drawback is that optimization of these
parameters is performed by a human trainer expertise,
utilizing previous studies in the literature and time
expensive trial and error methods. There is no commonly
accepted algorithm to globally optimize these parameters.
With the goal of reducing the time and expertise
required to construct and train price forecasting models
we considered the next generation of NNs called support
vector machines (SVM). SVM have fewer obvious
tunable parameters than NNs and the choice of parameter
values may be less crucial for good forecasting results.
The SVM is designed to systematically optimize its
structure (tune its parameter settings) based on the input
training data. The Training of a SVM involves solving a
quadratic optimization which has one unique solution and
does not involve the random initialization of weights as
training NN does. So any SVM with the same parameter
settings trained on identical data will give identical results.
This increases the repeatability of SVM forecasts and so
greatly reduces the number of training runs required to
find the optimum SVM parameter settings.
To generate training data for the SVM, different load
flow conditions are considered. Each new load flow
situation in the network provides a new pattern for the
SVM training and the basic challenge is to simulate load
flow cases that are highly correlated with the system
stability. Another advantage of the SVM is that it can be
properly trained with few input features. This is also
important considering that due to increasing competition
utilities may not share essential information. Without
PMUs, only very few features are commonly available
such as the transmitted power or the generation of
complete net groups. information about single generators
or transmission lines is usually not available long distance
power transits from regions with a surplus of generation
are taking place to meet the demand in other regions,
whereas economical aspects are playing a dominant role.
The variation of the load flow in the wide range lead to
dangerous situation, in which the small signal stability is
lost and inter-area oscillations, affecting the whole
interconnected power system, occur.
111. NUMERICAL EXAMPLE
In this paper, we use the Small Signal Analysis Tool
(SSAT) to study the stability of the test system. SSAT
takes advantage of the state-of-the-art in the development
2004 IEEE Intemational Conference on Electric Utility Deregulation, Restructuring and Power Technologies (DWT2004) April 2004 Hong Kong

of eigenvalue computation techniques and the related
numerical analysis. It offers powerful features for small
signal stability analysis of power systems with
comprehensive analysis functions[51.
For evaluating the scenarios the damping ratio is used.
- oi
network. After the training process is OK, the SVM can
work well with a new pattern or a new scenario.
If the prediction is not accurate enough, we can also
use the information provided by PMUs or fault recorders
to reinforce learning and calibrate rules. Consequently,
control strategy or SVM network can be update.

Ti = Jm
With
real part of the
0,. i th Eigenvalue
miimaginary part of the i th Eigenvalue 7 54 0 I 20

If the minimal damping ratio great than 3%-5%, the

system is usually considered small signal stability. So this
paper concentrates on the minimal damping ratio of each
scenario. Figure 1 shows the diagram of the well known
44a
I 0 TO

two area test systemL31.

1 26

0 0 a.^^ 0 0
I

In order to provide a sufficient amount of learning data,

150 different load flow scenarios of the test System have
been generated (the two area test system is relative small).
Fig. 1. Tucouteas)stcm
We use the first 100 scenarios to train the SVM, and
Figure 2 shows the distribution of all the eigenvalues of the last 50 scenarios for test.
a given scenario. The damping ratio and frequency of The MATLABR toolbox LS-SVM is used here; in this
modes are both displayed. study, the input features have 5 dimensions, which
include active power of each generator, and transmitted
Rid/., power from areal to area;?.
10 68 Figure 4 shows that the Support vector machine get
very accurate result for the first 100 scenarios training
data. The average percentage absolute error is 0.21%.
T 54

0. 14

4 40
0.12
0.1
M
:. 0. 08
1 26

00
./ 02 a 0.06
0.04
-sa 0000 -4a moo -30 OODO -20 0000 -IO 0000
I fI 0. 02
Fig. 2 Total eigenvalues
0
From figure 3, we can see the minimal damping ration 1 17 33 49 65 81 97
of the given scenario is in the range from 5% to 10%. scenario
Applying the information got from PMUs and other
Fig. 4 The training result
data sources, we can rapidly predict the minimal damping
ratio, that is to say, we can use this proposed method to
Figure 5 shows that the Support vector machine also
perform the security analysis and assessment online. This
get satisfied result for the next 50 scenarios testing data.
has great important to the planners and operators of power
The average percentage absolute error is 3.02%. Figure 6
grids.
gives the error of the predicted minimal damping ratio of
For get the needed knowledge or rule for a given
each scenario and the real value.
operating condition, a support vector machine network
must be trained offline like a conventional artificial

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2004 IEEE International Conference on Electric Utility Deregulation, Restructuring and P o w e r Technologies (DRPT2004) April 2 0 0 4 Hong Kong

0.14
0.12 VII. BIOGRAPHIES

0.1 Xu Dongjie was bom in China, in 1974. Hc

.z 0.08
00
-real graduated from Electrical
Department of North China Electnc Power
Engineering

8 0.06
-0
-predic University in 1996 He obtained M Sc degree
from NCEPU in 2001 Now He is working
0. 04 torwards his Ph D.degree His research
0.02 interests are power system dynamics, small
signal stability analysis and control.
0
1 7 13 1 9 25 31 37 43 49
scenario
Wang Peng was born in Henan Province,
Fig. 5 The testing result P.R.China on November 24, 1973. Hc received
Master degree and Ph.D degree from North
China Electric Powcr University (NCEPU) in
1997 and 2002. Now he is assistant chief of
Power System Control Institute of NCEPU. His
35! I special ficlds of interest included electric power
system analysis and control, electricity market,
dynamic stability and etc.

H e Renmu was born in China, in 1944.

She graduated from power system &
Automation Department of TsingHua
0.00 $\
_. .. _ _ - ....
n
c i ; ,;.- ?
pi
-
University in 1967. She obtained Ph.
1 4 7 10 13 16 19 22 25 28 31 34 37 40 43 46 49 D. degree from Lausanne Institute of
Fig. 6 T h e testing error Science and Technology (EPFL) in
1984. Now she is the professor of
IV. CONCLUSION North China Electric Power
This paper introduced a new method based on SVM for University in Beijing. Her interests
minimal damping ratio prediction of critical stability are power system dynamics, simulation veracity, dynamic
modes. For operational prospective dynamic security load modeling, deregulation, software engineering, wide
assessment, particularly oscillatory stability assessment, area measurement etc.
modal analysis using intelligent method can help to
Xu Tao was bom in China, in 1976. He
reduce the response time and elevate the operation level. graduate from ShanDong University of
The proposed method show low errors and high accuracy Technology in 1998, and received his master
for stability assessment of power systems. degree from North China Electric University in
2000. He is now working for his Ph.D. degree in
North China Electric Powcr University in
V. ACKNOWLEDGMENT Beijing. His interests are in the area of power
The authors gratefully acknowledge the Powertech Labs system analysis, data mining application etc.
Inc., for their excellent software SSAT.

VI. REFERENCES

[I] U. Bachmann, 1. Erlich and E. Grcbe, "Analysis of intcrarca

oscillation in the European elcctric power systcm in synchronous
parallel operation with thc ccntral-European networks," IEEE
PowerTech, Budapest 1988.
[2] H. Brculmann, E. Grcbe, "Analysis and Damping of inter-area
oscillation in the UCTEICENTREL power systcm," CIGRE 38-1 13,
Session 2000
[3] P. Kundur, Power System Stability and Control, McGraw-Hill,
New York, 1994.
[4] S. P. Tccuwscn, I. Erlich, "Fcature rcduction for ncural network
based small-signal stability asscssmcnt," 14IhPSCC, Sevilla, 2002
[S] "DSA SSAT uscr manual" Powcrtech Labs Inc.

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