On-Line Voltage Stability Based Contingency

Ranking Using Fast Voltage Stability Index

(FVSI)
i

Ismail Musirin. Student Member, IEEE, and 'Titik Khawa Abdul Rahman , Member, IEEE

Abslracf-Voltage instability is one phenomenon that could

happen in a power system due to its stressed condition. The
result would be the occurrence of voltage collapse which leads to
total blackout to the whole system. Therefore voltage collapse
prediction is important in power system planning and operation
so that the occurrence of voltage collapse due to voltage
instability could be avoided. Line outage in a power system could
also lead to the event of voltage collapse which implies the
contingency in the system. Line outage contingencies are ranked
so that the line which highly effects voltage stability of the
system when there is an outage occurs in this line could be
identified. The contingency ranking process can be conducted by
computing the line stability index of each line for a particular
line outage and sort them in descending order. The contingency
which is ranked highest implies that it contributes to system
instability. This paper presents a new voltage stability index
refers to a line namely fast voltage stability index (FVSI). The
values of the line indices indicate the voltage stability condition
in the system and it is used to rank the line outage contingency.
The information from the contingency ranking denotes the
severity of the voltage stability condition in a power system due
to line outage. The proposed contingency ranking technique was
tested on an IEEE reliability test system.
Index Terms- Voltage stability, contingency ranking, voltage
collapse.

1. INTRODUCTION

Voltage

violation in a system could be caused by the

stressed load and unpredictable events in the power system
termed as contingencies. Contingencies can be resulted by the
outage of lines and generator in the system. Line outages
could occur in the form of single or multiple. Contingency
analysis is a division in the voltage stability analysis. Since
contingency is one of the contributing factors in voltage
violation in the system, therefore contingency analysis and
voltage collapse prediction are conducted concurrently. The
procedures in the voltage collapse prediction and contingency
analysis are quite similar with line outage simulation included
in the continaency analysis. Throughout the years simulation
studies are progressively carried out to investigate further
impact of contingencies caused by line or generator outages.
The advancement of
t e c ~ o l o g y has aided the
computation to be faster. The analysis can be conducted either

' Ismail Musirin can be contacted through: ismailbmu.elec1.itm.cdu.m

,;

I
Khawa Abdul Rahman is an AsSoc.prof, at
Faculty afEle&ical
Engineering, Universiti Teknolagi MARA,MALAYSIA.
(e-mail:khawa(3ener.uitmedu.mv)

0-7803-7525-4/02/$17.00 0 2002 IEEE.

off-line or on-line [ 6 ] making it beneficial to the power

system operators. Most of the voltage stability condition was
conducted using voltage stability index or proximity as the
measuring instrument. Various indices [ 1]-[5] have been
proposed in the literature in order to predict the occurrence of
voltage collapse. New technique using neural network was
also adapted as reported by D Sutanto et al.[5] and other
artificial intelligent techniques [7].
This paper presents a novel Fast Voltage Stability Index
(FVSI) used to predict the occurrence of voltage collapse and
contingency analysis caused by line outage in a power
system. It proposed a simple mathematical formulation which
in turn speeded up the process of voltage stability analysis.
The voltage stability and contingency analyses were
conducted consecutively on the IEEE 24-bus reliability test
system and produced promising results. In the voltage
stability analysis, the line that gives index value closest to
1.00 will be taken as the most critical line corresponds to a
bus that may lead to the whole system instability. At this
point, the reactive load that could be connected to the bus is
considered as the maximum permissible load and bus ranking
in the system could be done by sorting the maximum
permissible load in ascending order. The smallest maximum
permissible load is ranked the highest implying that the bus is
the weakest bus in the system and vice versa. Subsequently,
contingency ranking caused by line outage is ranked based on
its severity. FVSI for each outage are sorted in descending
order in which the highest FVSI implies the most critical
outage in the system and vice versa. The proposed technique
was verified by examining the test system using line stability
index, L, proposed by M Moghavemmi el al. [ I ] and line
stability factor, LQP formulated by A Mohamed el aL[2].
Results showed that the developed FVSI exhibit an indicative
tool in predicting the occurrence of voltage collapse and
ranking the contingencies. It is possible to be implemented
practically.
TI ..
t N.I-_.
nFY
__.

.FORM1-11-.A.T.l n N.

Fast voltage stability index abbreviated by FVSI referred to a

line is formulated in this study as the measuring instrument in
predicting the voltage stability condition in the system. The
mathematical formulation is very simple that could speed up
the computation. The proposed index made used the same
concept as the existing ones [I], 121 in which discriminant is
set to be greater or equal thadto zero to achieve stability. If

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the discriminant is small than zero, the roots for the voltage or
power quadratic equations will have imaginary roots that
could cause instability in the system. The indices proposed by
M Moghavemmi et al. [ I ] and A Mohamed et a/ [2] are taken
in the comparison since these indices also referred to a line
that makes the comparison possible.
A Derivation of Fast Voltage Stability Index (FVSI)

The condition of voltage stability in a power system can be

characterized by the use of voltage stability index. This index
can either be referred to a bus or a line. The voltage stability
index developed in this research is referred to a line.
Generally, it started with the current equation to form the
power or voltage quadratic equations. The criterion employed
in this paper was to set the discriminant of the roots of voltage
or power quadratic equation to be greater than zero. When the
discriminant is less than zero, it causes the roots of the
quadratic equations to be imaginary which in turn causing the
voltage instability that may cause voltage collapse in the
system. The line index that is evaluated close to 1.00 will
indicate the limit of voltage instability.

Equating (1) and (4) we obtained,

- V ; L ~ P? - .iQ?
K +jX
- VzL-8

V,LO
__

ViV2L-rj - VzZLO=(R+)X)(P~- jQ)

separating the real and imaginary parts yields,
Vi L Z C O S ~
- Y: = R P ? +
and,

-V,V2sin6 =XP2-RQ2

Fig. 1 illustrates a 2-bus power system model where the

proposed FVSl is derived from. The symbols are explained as
follows:

P2, Q2
SI, S I

= voltage

on sending and receiving buses

= active and reactive power on the sending bus
= active and reactive power on the receiving
bus
= apparent power on the sending and receiving
buses
=SI-&*
= angle difference between sending and receiving
buses

/=

U
1,

v.,Ld

7 ,A

(7)

The roots for V2 will be;

4ZQ>X
l
(VI)(Ksind +Xcos8) C
-

(10)

Since 8 is nomally very small then,

0, R s i n 6 S O and Xcos&=X

4Z2Q,

FVSi,, = __

v,zx

where: Z

= line

impedance

= line reactance
Qi = reactive power

(1

V I is taken as the reference, and therefore the angle is shifted

into 0. The apparent power at bus 2 can be written as;

s2 = V 2 i

(6)

Taking the symbols i as the sending bus and j as the

receiving bus. Hence, the fast voltage stability index, FVSl
can be defined bv:

The line impedance is noted as Z = R+jX with the current that

flows in the line I S given by;

rI1.0

(5)

Rearranging (7) for P2 and substituting into ( 6 ) yields a

quadratic equation of V2;

Fig. I . 2-bus power system model

PI, QI

(4)

V*L- 6

To obtain real roots for V2, the discriminant is set greater than
or equal to 0; i.e;

bu5 2

V,, V2

p,-ie,

at the receiving end

V; = sendingend voltage
The value of FVSl that is evaluated close to 1.00 indicates
that the particular line is closed to its instability point which
may lead to voltage collapse in the entire system. To maintain
a secure condition the value of FVSl should be maintained

..-.. lPrr,hnn 1 00
._I..
I
I..

(2)

B. Line Stability index

(3)

M Moghavemmi et a/. [3] derived a line stability index based

on a power transmission concept in a single line. A single line
in an interconnected network is illustrated in Fig. 2.

Rearranging (2) yields;

1119

'S

\h

Qj = reactive power at the receiving end

Pi = sending end power
Vi = sending end voltage

r+jx

I
SSFpS+jQs

Yb S,=P,+jQ,

LQP must be kept less than 1.OO to maintain a stable system

Fig. 2. Typical one-line diagram oftransmission line

Using the R model, the roots for the voltage quadiatic
equation can be derived as;
load bus = 1

where, 6, - S2 = 6 and e is the line impedance angle

Setting the discriminant to be greater than zero, the line
stability index can he reproduced as;

L," =

determine the
weaker1 bus

4Qr x

~ K sin(^-^)]^
I

Wfy mth
her tnhnque

where:
x
= line reactance
Q, = reactive power at the receiving end
V, = sending end voltage
e = line impedance angle
=the angle difference between the supply
6
voltage and the receiving voltage

C. Line Srabilify Factor

A Mohamed er al. [2] derived a line stability factor based on a

power transmission concept in a single line. The formulation
begins with the current equation in a power system. Fig. 3
illustrates a single line of a power transmission concept.

Fig. 3. Single line of power transmission concept

The power equation can be derived as;

7
", Q,' -

Q, +($e *

Q,]

The line stability factor is obtained by setting the discriminant

of the reactive power roots at bus 1 to be greater than or equal
to zero thus defining the line stability factor, LQP as,

where: X = line reactance

Fig. 4. Flow chart for voltage stability analysis

111. VOLTAGE STABILITY ANALYSIS

Voltage stability analysis is mainly conducted to predict the

point of voltage collapse using the proposed fast voltage
stability index (FVSI). It is performed on the lEEE 24-bus
reliability test system that consists of 11 generator buses and
13 load buses with 38 interconnected lines. Initially, a load
flow program was developed to obtain the power flow
solution in the system. The results from the load flow
computation are used to calculate the FVSI values for each
line in the system. The load flow computation is run from the
base case, gradually increased until it stops converging. All
load buses in the system are consecutively tested in order to
determine the overall system performance accurately. Results
from this experiment indicate the point of voltage stability
condition, weak bus and critical line in the system. The
voltage stability condition and the critical line referred to a
particular bus are determined by the FVSI value close to 1.OO
while the weak bus is determined by the maximum
permissible load for the individual bus in the system. Load
ranking is done by sorting the maximum permissible load in
ascending order. The lowest value of maximum permissible
load characterizes the highest rank of bus which is the

I120

weakest one in the system. Verification of the proposed

technique is also performed by carrying out the similar
process using Iand LQP as the indicator. The whole
process is represented in the flow chart of Fig. 4.

chosen to justify the severity of outages that could occur in

the system. FVSI were computed on every outage for all
cases. Results from every outage will be sorted in descending
order. The outage that resulted the highest index exhibited the
most severe contingency. The complete procedures are
envisaged in the flow chart appeared in Fig. 5 .
Weakest tine for each bus vs reactive load ru(ation

(IEEE ZCbur)

Il..ctnr l0.d

".".110.

:~$~,::;~$~;*-~
M e n km=

**

Fig 6. Highest Index referred to a bus versus reactive load

variation
V. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
Results for the voltage stability analysis that aimed to
determine the voltage stability condition, weak bus and load
ranking in the system are shown in Fig. 6 and Fig. 7. Fig. 6
illustrates the response for critical line on each bus against the
reactive load variation. These lines are the dominating lines
that exhibited the highest FVSI values for every tested bus.
The line that exhibits the highest rate of change of FVSI is
considered as the critical line referred to a bus while the value
of maximum reactive load at FVSI value closed to 1.00 is
assigned as the maximum permissible load. The critical lines
extracted from every load bus are plotted together on the
same graph in order to identify weak bus in the system. Weak
bus is determined by looking at the maximum permissible
load rather than the FVSl values since beyond this limit
system will be already unstable.

F,+I
Fig. 5 . Flow chart for conti

ency analysis

IV. CONTINGENCY ANALYSIS

In order to observe the impact of line outage in the system,

contingency analysis is performed on the system.
Contingency analysis is conducted by removing the lines in
the system in sequence for every pre-determined case. Thepredetermined cases are as follows; case i: base case, case ii:
Q, = 1.0 P.u., case iii: Q5 = 1.0 P.u., case iv: Qlo= 2.0 pu.,
case v: Q20= 7.5 PA. The pre-determined cases are set at half
of the maximum permissible load obtained from the voltage
stability analysis. This is done in order to slow down the
divergence of the load flow computation, otherwise the load
flow diverged too fast and produced an incorrect result. of
contingency ranking. The procedures for contingency analysis
is almost similar to the one in voltage stability analysis. The
only difference is that, load flow computation is run with a
line outage at a time and there is no need to increase the
reactive power loading in the system. The buses are randomly

From Fig. 6, it is obvious that the line index increases as the

reactive power loading increased. Line 6 is the most critical
line corresponds to any load change at bus 3. Bus 3 has the
smallest maximum permissible load of 2.15 p.u. and it is
ranked the highest in the system. On the other hand, line 36 is
the most critical line corresponds to load change at bus 20.
Since bus 20 has a maximum permissible load at 16.00 P.U.,
therefore it is the most secure bus in the system according to
its large maximum loadability. The bar chart appeared in Fig.
7 is derived from the graph in Fig. 6. It indicates the
maximum permissible load for every load bus in the IEEE 24bus reliability system. From this result, a proper planning can
be arranged according to the bus capacity in avoiding voltage
collapse in the system.

1121

in ascending order. The smallest maximum permissible load

is ranked the highest and vice versa.

Uaxirnurn Penniriiblt Load lor PQ buses

2o

Bus No

Fig. 7. Maximum permissible load in IEEE 24-bus system

Table I shows the results for contingency ranking of the IEEE
24-bus system. The contingencies are ranked according to
their severity. The FVSI for each line outage are sorted in
descending order in which the highest index is ranked the
highest and vice versa. The line outage that is ranked the
highest implies that the particular line outage is very critical.
Experiments were persistently conducted in order to justify
the uniformity of the ranking. Results showed that ranking is
consistent for all cases indicating that the line outage
criticalness is accurately ranked. For instance, line 1 1 is
ranked the highest for all cases implying that this line is the
most critical one. Line I I is connected between bus 7 and bus
8 in the system. This line becomes very sensitive because the
removal of this line could cause the generator at bus 7
floating. As a result, the entire system becomes very unstable
even at the base case since the current from bus 7 will be
circulating in the bus itself. Table 2 compared the results of
contingency ranking using Lm[ I ] and LQP[2]. The results
agreed each other with minor misclassification indicating that
the proposed technique is reliable. From the table, lines 11,
23, 19, 15, 17, 14, 29, 16, 27 and 7 are the top ten highest
ranking in the system for all cases using different techniques
which indicates that these lines are the most critical outage in
the system. Vice versa, lines 3 I, 5 , 38, 26, 25, 32,33,6, 1 and
2 are the most secure lines in the system. The outage of these
lines cause less influence to the stability of the system.

VI. CONCLUSION
A thorough study on the voltage stability based contingency
ranking has been presented. The voltage stability analysis
process carried out using fast voltage stability index (FVSI) is
capable in determining the critical line referred to a bus,
critical outage, weak bus beside and the load ranking in the
system. The FVSI that is evaluated the highest implies the
sensitive line referred to a bus, while the lowest reactive
power loading indicates the weak bus in the system. Bus
ranking is resolute by sorting the maximum permissible load

Contingency analysis was conducted by simulating the line

outage in the system for several pre-determined cases to
verify the consistency of the outage contingencies ranking.
FVSI was also used as an instrument to indicate the
criticalness of a particular line when a line outage occurs in
the system. The indices were sorted in descending order for
every line outage to indicate the severity of contingencies.
Verification through comparison with other existing
techniques developed by A Mohamed et al.[2] and M
Moghavemmi et aQ31 showed an agreement which indicates
that the proposed technique is an acceptable one. From the
contingency analysis, the most critical outage and the most
secure lines in the system are identified. Voltage stability
analysis determined the weak bus, sensitive line referred to a
bus and bus ranking, whilst, contingency analysis determined
the most critical line outages in the system. Both analyses
used the voltage stability index (FVSI) as the measuring
instrument with less computation. Verification through the
comparison with other techniques are comparable showing
that the proposed formulated index is an indicative instrument
in evaluating the point of voltage instability and the
contingencies ranking caused by the line outages.

VII. ACKNOWLEDGMENT
The authors would like to acknowledge The Staff
Development and Training Section, Universiti Teknologi
MARA, MALAYSIA for the financial support of this
document.
VI11. REFERENCES
[ I ] M Moghavemmi, and F M Omar, Technique for
Contingency Monitoring and Voltage Collapse
Prediction,
IEE
Proceeding
on
Generation,
Transmission and Distribution, Vol. 145, pp 634 - 640.
No. 6, 1998.
[2] A Mohamed, G B Jasmon and S Yusoff, A Static
Voltage Collapse Indicator Using Line Stability Factors,
Journal of Industrial Technology, Vol. 7, No. I.pp 73-85.
Pt C, (1989)
[3] I Musirin and T K Abdul Rahman, On-Line Voltage
Stability Index for Voltage Collapse Prediction. in Power
System, presented at Brunei International Conference on
Engineering and Technology 2001 (BICET200 I), Brunei.
October 200 I.
[4] D Sutanto, C J Parker and I F Momison, Fast Prediction
of System Instability Using Artificial Neural Networks,
Australian Journal of Intdligent Informarion Processing
Systems, pp 67 - 74, 1996.
[ 5 ] I Dobson, H Glavitsch, C C Liu, Y Tamura and K Yu,
Voltage Collapse in Power Systems, IEEE Transaction
on Circuits and Devices,pp 40 - 45, 1992.

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[6] A C Zambroni de Souza, J C Stacchini de Souza and A

M Leite da Silva, On-Line Voltage Stability
Monitoring, IEEE Transaction on Power Systems, Vol.
15, No. 4, pp 40 - 45, Nov. 2000.
[7] Y Y Hau and H C Kuo, Fuzzy-Set Based Contingency
Ranking, IEEE Transaction on Power Systems, Vol. 7,
No. 3, pp I189 - 1196, Aug. 1992.
TABLE 1
RESULTS ON CONTINGENCY RANKING
Contingency Analysis

~ a s e ~ I: c a s e 3

Cased:

cases:

PhD studies in the field of voltage stability analysis and

expert system.
Titik Khawa Abdul Rahman received BSc
E.E. (Hons) and PhD on 1988 from
Loughborough University of Technology
and University of Malaya, MALAYSIA
on 1996 respectively. She is currently an
Assoc. Prof. at the Faculty of Electrical
Engineering,
Universiti
Teknologi
MARA. MALAYSIA and holding the S &
T Coordinator at The Graduate Studies Centre of the
university. She has written several papers in voltage stability
analysis and related field and one of the technical expert panel
at the national level. Her research interest includes voltage
stability analysis and GA.

IX. BIOGRAPHIES
lsmail Musirin received his B. Elect. Eng.
(Hons) from University of Technology
Malaysia on 1990 and
MSc from
University of Strathclyde on 1992
respectively. He is currently pursuing his

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