2011 IEEE Electrical Power and Energy Conference

Matlab-based Voltage Stability Analysis

Toolbox and its Validity Check
Yanfang Wei, Zhinong Wei, Guoqiang Sun

flexible tool to analyze power system voltage stability using

bifurcation method.
Software toolboxes for power system analysis can be
basically divided into two classes of tools: commercial
softwares and educational/research-aimed softwares. The
former commonly used are PSS/E, ATP, PSCAD etc., those
softwares are typically well-tested and computationally
efficient. Despite their completeness, these softwares can
result cumbersome for educational and research purposes.
For research purposes, the flexibility and the ability of easy
prototyping are often more crucial aspects than
computational efficiency. On the other hand, there is a
variety of open source research tools based on Matlab, which
are typically aimed at a specific aspect of power system
analysis[6-7].
Some of the Matlab-based toolboxes are: Power System
Analysis Toolbox(PSAT)[6], Power System Toolbox(PST),
Voltage Stability Toolbox(VST)[8-10], and so on. Among
these toolboxes, VST is open source and freely downloadable.
This paper introduces the VST, which is mainly used in the
analysis for power system voltage stability and bifurcation.
The main function of VST includes: power flow calculation,
time domain simulation, bifurcation analysis, singularity
analysis, etc.
A question at the front is that the already literatures
involve VST are focused on the apply of VST itself, the
explanation in a systematic way of all theoretical basis for
VST is not clear, and effective use of the results obtained by
VST simulation is a little weak. With consideration of the
above problems, this paper first describes the main structure
of VST and analysis its main function modules, then the
theoretical basis of VST is analyzed in detail; At last, a
five-bus system with three generators and IEEE 30-bus test
system are presented to show the applicability of the VST,
the simulation results show that the tool is suitable to study
the voltage stability of power system.

AbstractA novel Voltage Stability Toolbox(VST) is

introduced, which is programmed using Matlab math language,
and the features of its open source code and a complete set of
user-friendly graphical interfaces are detailed. It implements
standard Newton-Raphson (NR) and Newton-Raphson-Seydel
(NRS) convergent algorithms to analyze the voltage stability and
bifurcation of power system. The main functions of VST include
power flow, time domain simulation, singularity analysis,
eigenvalue analysis, as well as static and dynamic bifurcation
analysis. VST is a very helpful tool to understand voltage
stability and nonlinear bifurcation phenomenon. Test results of
the application of this toolbox in a five-bus system with three
generators and IEEE 30-bus test system are presented to show
the practicality and effectiveness of the VST.
Index Terms-- voltage stability toolbox; Matlab; voltage
stability; bifurcation analysis

I. INTRODUCTION

SSENTIALLY, the power system is a dynamic nonlinear

system; the property change of voltage stability is a
dynamic process from stable state to bifurcation. Both theory
and practice indicate that the bifurcation theory is a powerful
tool to analyze structure stability mechanism of nonlinear
dynamic system. Now bifurcation theory is widely used in
power system voltage stability analysis and has become one
of the important theory tools in voltage stability research[1-5].
Comparing with traditional linear analysis approaches,
bifurcation theory is more accurate in analyzing the system
stability around critical point neighborhood. But this method
is against complex calculations and modeling difficultiesso
that appropriate simulation analysis methods are needed to
thorough study of power system bifurcation. This paper
describes the Voltage Stability Toolbox (VST), which is a
This research is supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of
China (50877024) .
Yanfang Wei is with College of Energy and Electrical Engineering,
Hohai University, Nanjing, China (e-mail: meilaier@163.com).
Zhinong Wei is with College of Energy and Electrical Engineering,
Hohai University, Nanjing, China (e-mail: wzn_nj@263.net).
Guoqiang Sun is with College of Energy and Electrical Engineering,
Hohai University, Nanjing, China (e-mail: hhusunguoqiang@163.com).

978-1-4577-0404-8/11/$26.00 2011 IEEE

II. MAIN FUNCTION INTRODUCTION OF VST

The VST integrates the symbolic and numeric
computations with a graphical menu-driven interface based

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angels are relative to the swing bus; ng and npq are the bus
number of PV and PQ nodes, respectively

on MATLAB and its extended symbolic toolbox. It

implements symbolic computations to build exact load flow
equations and Jacobian matrices including 2ndorder
derivatives, required to implement numerical computations
such as Newton-Raphson(NR)and Newton-Raphson-Seydel
(NRS) for bifurcation analysis. It has proved to be a useful
tool for education and research in the area of power system
stability analysis. Fig.1 shows the schematic diagram of the
VST[11].

Pg = [ P2 Pn g ]T is pure active power injection vector of

ng 1

and

demands of npq load nodes, respectively; the elements of

d Pg , d Pl and d Ql , can be set to be positive, negative, or

zero depending on the load increase scenario of interest.
Therefore, one may conveniently increase load or
generation at a bus or at a group of buses through equation
(1).
VST adopts direct method to obtain static bifurcation
point; the direct method is proposed by Seydel in 1979[12],
which is used to calculate static bifurcation of single
parameter.
Static bifurcation uses NR-NRS two-stage algorithm to
calculate equalization points. The dynamic bifurcation
analysis identifies small-signal stability characteristics by
computing and checking the eigenvalues of the reduced
system Jacobian matrix at each equilibrium point along PV
curve. It will occur three kinds of bifurcation along the PV
curve:SNB, Hopf Bifurcation, and Singularity Induced
Bifurcation(SIB).

A. Load Flow Calculation

Load flow is the most basic and important calculation of
power system analysis. VST implements the standard NR
algorithm to compute the load flow solutions at a given set of
bus injections. The GUI for load flow calculation allows the
user to set control variables of the NR algorithm such as
tolerance, error, maximum number of iteration, parameter
values and state values.

C. Small-signal Analysis
In power system small-signal analysis, system matrix
eigenvalues have close relations with the system stability.
VST studies small signal stability of a certain point on PV
curve by analyzing system matrix eigenvalues.
VST analyzes the sensitivity of eigenvalue nearby SIB by
the following equations:

B. Bifurcation Analysis of Voltage Stability

VST uses a three-stage NR-NRS-NR algorithm to analyze
voltage stability bifurcation; the first stage uses standard NR
method to iteration until it fails to converge. Then it
automatically switches to the NRS method to find load flow
solutions at and around the Saddle Node Bifurcation(SNB)
point. After obtaining the SNB point, the standard NR
method is switched back to compute low voltage of PV
curve.
Changes in bus injections are achieved through
parameterization of bus injections with a scalar parameter
known as a bifurcation parameter[9]:

[ J ] =
[ g y ] =

(3)

where, J is the Jacobin matrix of the system, gy is the Jacobin

matrix of the algebraic equations, is the biggest real
eigenvalue of J, is the smallest real eigenvalue of gy, and
are the right eigenvector of and , respectively.
D. Dynamic Time Simulation
Time domain simulation is an important method to
research power system dynamic safety analysis and control.
VST also has the function of time domain simulation. The
time domain simulation adopts an ordinary differential
equation (ODE) solver combined with an algebraic solver at
each iteration step. A fourth-order RungaKutta method is
used as an ODE solver, while an NR procedure is
implemented as an algebraic solver to update the load bus
voltage magnitudes and angles at each integration step.

= 0 + * '

(1)
0
where, is the initial real or reactive power, is the
bifurcation parameter which denotes the level of load,

' = [d TPg d TPl d QTl ]T is the vectors of searching directions,

' are:

d Pg = [d P2 d Pn ]T

T
d Pl = [d Png +1 d Png +npq ]

d = [d Pn +1 d Pn +n ]T

g
g pq

Ql

Pl = [ Png +1 Png +npq ]T

Ql = [Qng +1 Qng +npq ]T are the real and reactive power

Fig. 1 Schematic diagram of VST

T denotes transpose, elements of

generators

(2)
III. NUMERICAL EXAMPLES
A. Simulation of Five-bus System with Three Generators
First a five-bus system is analyzed, whose connection
diagram is displayed in Fig.2 [13-14].

where, n is the total node number of the system, generator 1

is the swing bus with zero angel and all the other phase

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bus 4

bus 2
jX d

bus 1
jX d

generator 2

G
generator 1

Pd 4Qd 4

jX d

bus 3
jX d

G
generator 3

bus 5

Pd5Qd5

Fig. 2 Five-bus system with three generators

1) Bifurcation Analysis of Voltage Stability

The voltage amplitude of node 4 is shown in Fig. 3; the
lower part of Fig.3 is the partial enlarge figure around SNB.
As shown in Fig.3, when is 3.1633 the system occurring
SNB, which is the right most of the PV curve; exceeding this
point power flow can not be converged; SNB is corresponds
to maximum power point at a certain load increase mode of
the system.

Fig.4 Voltage magnitude at bus 4 of dynamic bifurcation and singular points

2) Singularity and Eigenvalue Analysis

For a point of PV curve, VST analyzes the small-signal
stability of the point by computing system Jacobin matrix
eigenvalues. The distributing and movement of two critical
eigenvalues are shown in Fig.5 as increasing; uncritical
eigenvalues are not figured and the dotted arrow line in Fig.5
denote the increase direction of .

Fig. 3 Voltage magnitude at bus 4 of static bifurcation

Fig. 5 Critical eigenvalues plot of the system matrix

In VST dynamic bifurcation simulation, a fixed-step size

is used at the NR stage, at the NRS stage, the step size is
changed automatically by VST according to the second-order
derivatives. The dynamic bifurcation and singular points of
node 4 is shown in Fig.4.
As shown in Fig.4, the SNB and SIB are identified as the
parameter changing. The singular points and PV curve
intersect at SIB; as equal to 3.0205, the system occurs SIB.
Now the stability performance of low voltage equilibrium
points has changing from stable to unstable state. The high
voltage and low voltage equilibrium points coincide when
increases to 3.1633.

Just before equal to 3.0205, the two critical eigenvalues

are located in the left half plane in Fig.5, which implies
stability. As the parameter changing from one of the
complex eigenvalue to the right half plane and becoming a
large positive number while the other eigenvalue stays in the
left half plane, but it becomes a large negative real number.
Therefore, stability feature of the equilibrium undergoes an
instantaneous change from stable to unstable. As
increasing to 3.1633, a critical eigenvalue of the system
becomes to zero while the other eigenvalue stays in the left
half plane, now the system occurs SNB.
TABLE and TABLE are the sensitivity of the system
state varieties to left and right eigenvector corresponding to
the zero eigenvalue of load flow Jacobian matrix at the SNB
point, respectively; where left eigenvector is remedial action
vector and right eigenvector is null space vector. , V, P, Q in
TALBE and TABLE denote phase angle, voltage

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amplitude, active power, reactive power, respectively.

As shown in TABLE and TABLE , null space vector

of V7 and 7 are more sensitive to the increasing .
Similarly, remedial action vector of P7 and Q7 is more
sensitive to the increasing , which means node 7 is the
critical node of the system at the load increase mode. The
adjacent region of node 7 is the dangerous region of the
system; to analyze the change of the system variables around
node 7 can provide practical information of prevention and
remedial control for voltage stability.

TABLE I SENSITIVITY OF REMEDIAL ACTION VECTOR VERSUS

OF FIVE-BUS SYSTEM
State variables
Sensitivity of

P2
P3
P4
Q4
P5
Q5
0.1254 0.5183 0.1762 0.0810 0.4200 0.7083

TABLE SENSITIVITY OF NULL SPACE VERTOR VERSUS OF

FIVE-BUS SYSTEM
State variables
Sensitivity of

V4
V5
2
3
4
5
0.1522 0.6294 0.3976 0.2139 0.6060 0.0984

IV. CONCLUSION
Power system is a complicated nonlinear dynamic system,
its operation stability, especially the voltage stability is an
important component of modern power system stability
analysis. VST, a Matlab-based toolbox for voltage stability
bifurcation analysis is introduced in this paper, which has
open source code and user-friendly graphical interface. VST
is very helpful to understand voltage stability and nonlinear
bifurcation phenomena. The feasibility and validity of the
proposed VST are verified by simulating a five-bus system
with three generators and IEEE 30-bus test system, the
results show that the VST is a powerful tool to analyze
voltage stability for power system researchers. The new
version 3.0 of VST and its download website is available at:
http://power.ece.drexel.edu/vst.html

As shown in TABLE, the sensitivity of Q5 to is the

biggest, which is 0.7083. It can be deduced that adjust Q5
appropriately can further increase the system stability. From
Table we can know that the sensitivity of 3 to is the
biggest, which is 0.6294. The result validates the change
scheme of .
B. Simulation and Analysis of IEEE 30-bus Test System
The searching directions of injection power and injection
space of IEEE 30-bus test system are set. The voltage
stability bifurcation of IEEE 30-bus test system is simulated
by VST, which equally verifies the applicability of VST in
analyzing the bifurcation behavior of voltage stability. The
test system of IEEE 30-bus is shown in Fig. 6[15].
Due to limited space, TABLE and TABLE list only
part sensitivity parameters of the system state varieties to left
and right eigenvector.

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[1]

Fig. 6 IEEE 30-bus test system

TABLE

SENSITIVITY OF REMEDIAL ACTION VECTOR VERSUS

OF IEEE 30-BUS SYSTEM

State variables
Sensitivity of
TABLE

P2
0.2072

P7
0.4013

Q7
0.1938

Q11
0.2089

Q19
0.1722

SENSITIVITY OF NULL SPACE VERTOR VERSUS OF

IEEE 30-BUS SYSTEM

State variables
Sensitivity of

V7
2
7
8
16
18
0.2217 0.2140 0.3997 0.2087 0.2232 0.2058

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VI. BIOGRAPHIES
Yanfang Wei was born in HeNan, China, 1982. He received the B.S. and
M.S. degree in electrical engineering from Henan Polytechnic University, in
2006 and 2008, respectively. Now he is pursing the Ph.D. degree at Hohai
University, Nanjing, China.
His main research interests are power system analysis and its control.
Zhinong WEI was born in JiangSu, China, in 1962. He received the B.S.
degree from Hefei University of Technology, Hefei, China in 1984 and M.S.
degree from Southeast University, Nanjing, China in 1987. He then received
his Ph.D. degree from Hohai University, Nanjing, China in 2004. He is now
a professor at Hohai University.
His research interests include state estimation, voltage stability, smart
distribution systems, optimization and planning, load forecasting and
integration of distributed generation into electric power systems.
Guoqiang SUN was born in JiangSu, China, in 1978. He received the B.S.,
M.S. and Ph.D. degree in electrical engineering from Hohai University,
Nanjing, China, in 2001, 2005 and 2010, respectively. He is currently a
lecturer in the College of Energy and Electrical Engineering, at Hohai
University, China.
His main research interests are power system analysis and its control.

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