Mixed Transient Stability Analysis Using AC and DC Models
Mixed Transient Stability Analysis Using AC and DC Models
Mixed Transient Stability Analysis Using AC and DC Models
Abstract—This paper presents a modified method for power is therefore an open challenge to develop faster algorithms for
system transient stability analysis, allowing the reduction of the transient stability analysis.
computational requirements while retaining important system Traditionally, dynamic equivalents have been used to reduce
dynamics. The approach formulates the power balance equations
depending on the area of interest. The detailed ac model, including
the computational burden. This approach retains an area of
full real and reactive power equations, is used for the area in interest for study, called the internal system and replaces the
which high accuracy is required, while the simpler dc model, in- external system—neighboring areas connected to the internal
cluding linear real power equation, is used for more remote areas system—with an electrical equivalent. The power system
where real power dynamics dominate. A high level of accuracy model is thus reduced in size. There are three general ap-
can be achieved using the ac model in the area of interest, and proaches used to develop these equivalents: modal, coherency
computational complexity can be reduced with the less detailed dc
model in the remainder of the system. In order to prevent the loss and measurement-based [4], [5]. While certainly useful in some
of simulation accuracy, this paper proposes a way to compensate situations, the equivalent approach has weaknesses in that the
line losses neglected using the dc model. Case studies with the equivalent must be updated whenever the operating point or
IEEE 118-bus system are provided to validate the performance of system topology is substantially changed [6] and the simulation
the proposed method. accuracy of the traditional equivalent methods is dependent on
Index Terms—Ac power flow, dc power flow, mixed approach, the type of disturbance (fault) [7].
transient stability simulation. One example of a disturbance that can usually be addressed
quite well by the use of a substantially reduced equivalent is
a bus fault and subsequent line opening actions. The effects
I. INTRODUCTION will be associated mostly with the nearby voltage magnitudes.
W ITH power systems being operated closer to their se- The frequency impact is small because such disturbances do
curity limits, it is critically important that utilities have not usually create a substantial imbalance between the electric
access to powerful computation tools that can perform rigorous load and generation. The reduced system with the buffer zone
analysis of transient behavior [1]. However, due to interconnec- around the fault and with an appropriate dynamic equivalent at
tions, modern power grids have become increasingly complex. the boundary buses can give accurate responses [4]–[7].
They are comprised of millions of loads and generators, and tied On the other hand, when generator or load outages happen,
together by hundreds of thousands of miles of transmission and the situation is different in that the frequency perturbation will
distribution wires with a myriad of control devices. As a result, affect the entire interconnect. The use of the traditional equiv-
a power system transient stability simulation for dynamic secu- alent could be inappropriate to represent system responses cor-
rity assessment is required to solve a huge number of nonlinear rectly. One issue would be if the dynamic equivalent does not
differential-algebraic equations (DAE) and needs to be run for have enough reserve generator governor response to make up
many contingency cases [2]. Computational demands in terms for the generator loss or the load increase. The reduced system
of storage and simulation time are significant. cannot maintain additional real power injections from the al-
Dramatic advancements in microprocessor technology have ready removed external system. Therefore, an enhanced tran-
made substantial improvements in transient stability compu- sient stability simulation method is required both to reduce the
tational speed. Nevertheless, when simulating larger systems computational requirements and to achieve better simulation ac-
(i.e., with tens of thousands of buses), computation time with curacy than the pure equivalent approach.
commercial transient stability packages is still limiting [3]. It The authors presented a hybrid power-flow approach in [8]
that combines full ac models with a less detailed dc power flow
models. Here this approach is extended to transient stability
Manuscript received May 14, 2014; revised August 02, 2014, November 09,
2014, and February 20, 2015; accepted March 22, 2015. This work was support analysis. The idea originates from the fact that although reactive
in part by Korea Electric Power Corporation (KEPCO), Seoul, Korea and in power does not travel well in power systems because the trans-
part by the U.S. Department of Energy through award number DE-OE0000097. mission network is mostly inductive, the real power does. Both
Paper no. TPWRS-00655-2014.
S. Kim is with Korea Electric Power Research Institute (KEPRI), Daejeon,
real and reactive power dynamics are dominant in the internal
Korea (e-mail: soobkim@kepco.co.kr). system where any type of fault occurs. For the external system
T. J. Overbye is with the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, which is impacted by a fault in the internal, real power dy-
IL 61801 USA (e-mail: overbye@illinois.edu).
Color versions of one or more of the figures in this paper are available online
namics play a more important role. The significant dynamics of
at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org. both areas can be preserved by formulating different power-flow
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TPWRS.2015.2416355 equations at each region. The detailed ac model, including full
0885-8950 © 2015 IEEE. Translations and content mining are permitted for academic research only. Personal use is also permitted, but republication/
redistribution requires IEEE permission. See http://www.ieee.org/publications_standards/publications/rights/index.html for more information.
This article has been accepted for inclusion in a future issue of this journal. Content is final as presented, with the exception of pagination.
Notations
is the bus voltage magnitude at bus in per-unit and is
the voltage phase angle at bus . and are the net injected
real and reactive powers at bus . and are real and
imaginary part of the admittance matrix elements corresponding
to a line between bus and bus .
Fig. 1. Flowchart of a conventional transient simulation.
B. AC Power-Flow Model
In the ac model approach the power balance equations are
real and reactive power equations, is used for the area of in- represented by the (3) and (4). These are associated with the
terest, while the simpler dc model, including only linear real algebraic (2) for transient stability analysis:
power equation, is used for more remote areas. In order to pre-
vent the loss of simulation accuracy, this paper presents a way
to compensate for the line losses neglected using the dc model.
Therefore, the approach can reduce the computational require- (3)
ments, and still achieve a high level of simulation accuracy in
the area of interest.
This paper is organized as follows. Section II presents a
brief analytic basis for the power system transient simulation (4)
and power-flow models. The proposed approach is presented
in Section III. Section IV illustrates simulation results with the The ac model is formulated with nonlinear equations. An iter-
IEEE 118-bus system. The conclusion is presented in Section V. ative algorithm is required to solve those equations. Thus the
ac model is computationally expensive, especially for transient
II. POWER SYSTEM TRANSIENT SIMULATION stability analysis which must find solution for every time step.
The basics of power system transient stability simulation and C. DC Power-Flow Model
power-flow models are briefly explained in this section.
The dc model simplifies the ac model by making several as-
A. Transient Stability Simulation sumptions. These are 1) the reactive power balance equations
are completely ignored, 2) all voltage magnitudes are one per-
A transient stability simulation involves solving a set of dif- unit, 3) voltage angle differences are small enough and 4) line
ferential equations and an accompanying set of algebraic equa- losses are ignored. Hence the dc model reduces the size of the
tions shown in (1) and (2) [9], [10]. These are called differential power-flow problem and changes nonlinear problems to a set of
algebraic equations and are of the following form: linear equations. It is represented with the following equation:
(1)
(5)
(2)
Equation (1) represents the power system dynamics, with the Even though the assumptions reduce simulation accuracy, the dc
variables showing the dynamic state variables such as generator model has been widely used because of its computational advan-
rotor angle and speed. The dimension of vector is dependent tages over the ac model. It can run many times faster because
on the modeling detail and the size of the power systems. Equa- of following reasons [11]. The dc model reduces the size of the
tion (2) represents the stator and network algebraic equations, equation set to about half of the ac model, because the reactive
This article has been accepted for inclusion in a future issue of this journal. Content is final as presented, with the exception of pagination.
KIM AND OVERBYE: MIXED TRANSIENT STABILITY ANALYSIS USING AC AND DC MODELS 3
power equations are ignored. The model is linear. Thus no iter- for larger power systems the cumulative sum of these individ-
ations are required and only one factorization of the matrix is ually small errors might not be negligible and hence total real
needed no matter what operation conditions are considered. power balances might not be preserved [12]. Therefore, the dc
model cannot capture the wide spread real power impact accu-
III. PROPOSED METHOD rately from the internal system. The proposed approach expects
that the dimension of the external system would be much larger
The proposed method formulates the algebraic equations
than the internal system. It is thus necessary to compensate for
for transient stability simulation by combining the ac with
these losses to maintain the real power balances in the external
the dc power-flow models, depending on the area of interest.
system. The proposed approach converts the losses into shunt
The detailed ac model is used for the internal system where
resistances at each external bus. The loss can be obtained from
both real and reactive power dynamics are dominant. The
(3) and has the following form:
simpler dc model is used for the external system where real
power dynamics dominate. The proposed method can then
represent both the localized effects related to real and reactive (8)
power-flows using the ac model for the internal system, and the
entire effects mostly related to real power-flows using the dc The loss modeling is based on initial ac power-flow solutions
model for the external system. Thus, the proposed method aims and it is performed before the transient simulation loop. The
to achieve a high level of simulation accuracy with the full ac power balance equations for the external system have the fol-
model in the internal system and to speed up transient stability lowing form:
simulation with the linearized dc model.
D. Computational Benefits
As shown in Figs. 1 and 2, transient simulations need to solve
a set of algebraic equations for every time step. The use of the
dc model in the external system reduces the dimension of the
(6) equations and thus the computational requirements can be re-
duced greatly. The benefits are dependent on the ratio of the
number of internal buses to external buses. More computational
reductions can be achieved when the dc area is much larger than
the ac area. Analytic details about computational benefits de-
pending on the ratio can be found in [8]. In addition, the dc
model does not consider voltage magnitude variation and reac-
(7) tive power-flows. Therefore, additional speed up can be made
by neglecting the dynamic equations related to voltage magni-
where is the initial voltage magnitude at bus obtained tude or reactive powers in the external system. These dynamics
from power-flow solutions. are associated mostly with the exciter models.
KIM AND OVERBYE: MIXED TRANSIENT STABILITY ANALYSIS USING AC AND DC MODELS 5
TABLE I
DETAILS OF THE SYSTEM DIVISION
TABLE II
COMPUTATION TIME OF 118-BUS CASE
Fig. 13. Average of bus angle RMSE with varying load amount at bus 3.
KIM AND OVERBYE: MIXED TRANSIENT STABILITY ANALYSIS USING AC AND DC MODELS 7
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ac and dc models. A detailed ac model, including nonlinear real
and reactive power equations, is used in the internal system, Soobae Kim (S'10) received the B.S degree in electrical and computer engi-
while a simpler dc model is used in the external system. The real neering from Kyungpook National University, Daegu, Korea, in 2002, the M.S.
power losses ignored by the standard dc model are compensated degree from Seoul National University, Seoul, Korea, in 2004, and the Ph.D.
degree from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL, USA,
for in the external system by using the initial power-flow solu- in 2014.
tions. The test simulations performed with IEEE 118-bus system Since 2004, he has been with Korea Electric Power Research Institute
have confirmed that the proposed method achieves faster and (KEPRI), Daejeon, Korea. His special fields of interest are power system
analysis, dynamic system equivalent, and model reduction.
accurate solution. More computational benefits can be achieved
with larger power system cases which have higher dimension-
ality of the external system compared to the internal system. It
is expected that the proposed method would be a promising so- Thomas J. Overbye (S'87–M'92–SM'96–F'05) was born in Milwaukee, WI,
USA. He received the B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineering
lution for advanced transient stability study. from the University of Wisconsin, Madison, Madison, WI, USA.
He was with Madison Gas and Electric Company, Madison, WI, USA, from
1983 to 1991. He is currently the Fox Family Professor of Electrical and Com-
APPENDIX puter Engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana,
IL, USA. His current research interests include power system visualization,
Table III lists the machine parameters for the IEEE 118-bus power system dynamics, power system cyber security, and power system ge-
system. Table IV lists the TGOV1 model parameters. omagnetic disturbance analysis.