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IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER SYSTEMS
Voltage Stability Assessment Using
Equivalent Nodal Analysis
Denis Hau Aik Lee, Member, IEEE
AbstractThis paper presents a simple method for voltage sta-
bility assessment by reducing the bus impedance matrix of a net-
work into its two-bus equivalent model at a referred bus. Closed-
form equations of the equivalent model could then be derived to
facilitate an equivalent nodal analysis at the referred bus to de-
termine its voltage stability limit. The method was also shown to
have parallels with the well-accepted modal analysis of the Jaco-
bian matrix. These include dening geometric indices to identify
critical buses and participation factors to quantify contribution of
network elements to their criticality. The method however does not
require post power ow solution processing of the Jacobian matrix;
such computational advantage may make it suitable for online ap-
plications. The IEEE 300-bus system was tested with the method
which was shown to be valid and computationally robust and ef-
cient.
Index TermsEffective distance to collapse, equivalent nodal
analysis, reduced bus impedance matrix, voltage stability.
I. INTRODUCTION
M UCH work on voltage stability assessment can be found
in the literature [1][18]. One aspect was on proximity
of the system operating point to voltage collapse [1][7],
[11][18]. Another aspect which has practical relevance was on
why and where the voltage instability had occurred [8][10].
On the proximity to voltage collapse, the primary focus was
to derive indices that were simple and fast to compute, in view
of potentially deploying them for online applications. Among
many of the indicators proposed were the index [2], minimum
singular value [3], and minimum eigenvalue [7]. One contention
on these [1], [3][7] is the need for post power ow solution pro-
cessing of the Jacobian matrix, which could be computationally
intensive for large systems. This had motivated works on devel-
oping efcient algorithms when using a full system model [3],
[11] or using a reduced system model [2], [12] to compute the
indices. By far, the latter approach is more straightforward since
it uses only the power ow solution, but it has received limited
acceptance so far, perhaps due to approximations made of the
theoretical indices [2], [12]. More recently, new indices based
on reduced system [17], [18] or branch-oriented models [15],
[16] have also been proposed. These indices have the feature
of extinguishing to zero [16],[17] as the one proposed in this
Manuscript received July 20, 2014; revised July 25, 2014 and January 06,
2015; accepted February 03, 2015. Paper no. TPWRS-00986-2014.
The author is with the Sarawak Energy Berhad, Sarawak, East Malaysia.
Color versions of one or more of the gures in this paper are available online
at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org.
Digital Object Identier 10.1109/TPWRS.2015.2402436
0885-8950 2015 IEEE. Personal use is permitted, but republication/redistribution requires IEEE permission.
See http://www.ieee.org/publications_standards/publications/rights/index.html for more information.
1
work, or tending to one [15],[18], to indicate voltage instability
had occurred. However, they only indicate the critical buses and
do not yield information on the causes and effects of voltage in-
stability.
On the causes and effects of voltage instability, identication
of critical system locations to undertake appropriate types of re-
medial measure is a practical planning and operation concern.
This had motivated works such as [8][10] which were based
on a widely accepted method [7] that exploited the modal prop-
erties of the full system model.
Taking cognizance of the emphasis by previous works
[1][18] for a simple and computationally efcient system
model that also offers full facility to develop practical aspects
for voltage stability assessment, a method which incorporates
both these features is proposed in this work. Thus, this paper
presents a method which reduces the bus impedance matrix of a
network into its two-bus equivalent model at a referred bus, to
facilitate an equivalent nodal analysis to determine its voltage
stability limit. The method is deemed to be simple and fast
since it uses only the power ow solution for this purpose. The
method has parallels with the modal analysis of the Jacobian
matrix; consequently, use of geometric indices to identify
critical buses and participation factors to quantify contribution
of network elements to their criticality could also be developed.
The IEEE 300-bus system was tested with the method which
was shown to be valid and computationally robust and efcient,
thus making it a suitable and practical planning and operation
tool.
II. MODELING FOR VOLTAGE STABILITY ANALYSIS
A. Mathematical Model
Various methods to assess steady-state voltage stability [7]
have been derived from the Newton-Raphson power ow solu-
tion method given by
(1)
where the Jacobian sub-matrices , , , and com-
prise partial derivatives of bus power balance equations with re-
spect to bus voltage angles and magnitudes.
In [7], it was assumed that since only incremental
reactive power variation was considered; thus (1) reduces to
(2)
where is the reduced Jaco-
bian matrix.
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2 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER SYSTEMS

On the other hand, if only incremental active power variation

at PQ buses is considered, similar as in [14], then ,
, and bus may be assumed such that (1) reduces
to (7)
and using (7) in (5), (6) yields
(3)

where is the reduced Jaco-

bian matrix. , , , and are Jacobian sub-matrices (8)
in (1) partitioned along the th row and th column, and Equation (7) implies that the minimum eigenvalue in (4) di-
being the number of PQ, PQ, and PV, buses, respectively. minishes to zero at the singularity of the Jacobian matrix. Thus
Equations (2) and (3) are the most common mathematical from (7) and (8), it is respectively seen that the modal and nodal
forms used in the various steady-state voltage stability analysis voltage sensitivity indices are identically innite at the singu-
approaches, as described in the following. larity of the Jacobian matrix. This suggests that the nodal and
modal approaches are allied and complementary, and may thus
B. Modal Approach be used interchangeably. However the nodal approach also re-
This approach, which was rst proposed in [7], uses the quires post power ow solution processing of the Jacobian ma-
modal properties of the matrix. Accordingly, (2) can be trix, viz. computing determinants and cofactors of the Jacobian
decomposed into its modal form and its modal relationship matrix and sub-matrices, which may be computationally inten-
for the th eigenmode is given by sive for a large power system. Thus there is motivation to further
rene and simplify the nodal approach as in the following sec-
(4) tions such that a faster voltage stability assessment approach is
derived.
where is the eigenvalue of the th eigenmode. Thus the
modal voltage sensitivity becomes innite III. EQUIVALENT NODAL ANALYSIS OF REDUCED
when diminishes to zero, meaning that system voltage insta- NETWORK BUS-IMPEDANCE MATRIX
bility had occurred. Therefore the minimum eigenvalue deter- For a power system with nodes comprising load and
mines the critical mode with respect to voltage instability, and generator buses, i.e., , its bus impedance matrix is
in [7], participation factors of buses, generators, and branches given by
were also dened with these modal quantities.
(9)
C. Nodal Approach
Another approach as proposed in this work makes use of the where and are column vectors of bus voltages and current
nodal properties of the or matrix. For , injections, respectively (the tilde denotes complex quantities),
if it is further assumed that there is only incremental reactive and is an bus impedance matrix. In , is the
power variation at the th bus, i.e., , , , self or driving-point impedance of the th bus and is the
, then the nodal voltage sensitivity index transfer impedance between the th and th bus.
of the th bus can be dened from the th row of (2), similar as Let and be the set of
in [19], as generator and load bus indices, respectively. Writing for the th
bus voltage , , from (9)
(5)
(10)
where is the minor of the th diagonal element of . which after rearranging gives
Similarly for , if it is further assumed that there is
only incremental active power variation at the th PQ bus, i.e., (11)
, , , bus, we can
similarly derive from (3) the nodal voltage sensitivity index
of the th bus as We dene

(6)
(12)
where is the minor of the th diagonal element of . where and
. is the MVA load at the th bus, and are
D. Relationship Between Modal and Nodal Approaches respectively its active and reactive load components. is
The relationship between the modal and nodal voltage sensi- the equivalent MVA load at the th bus, and are
tivity indices can be shown using the Leibniz formula for block respectively its equivalent active and reactive load components
matrices [20] on and to obtain (the asterisk denotes conjugate quantities).
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LEE: VOLTAGE STABILITY ASSESSMENT USING EQUIVALENT NODAL ANALYSIS 3

Fig. 1. Two-bus equivalent model of the -bus power system at the th re-
ferred bus.

Thus substituting (12) into (11), then multiplying both sides

of the equation by the conjugate of gives

(13)

If is taken as the reference vector, it is seen that (13) is the Fig. 2. th bus voltage prole surface dened by (16).
power equation of a classical two-bus power system as shown
in Fig. 1. Thus (13) represents the two-bus equivalent model of
the -bus power system seen from the th bus. Accordingly, where is the maximum equivalent load that can in-
, , and as dened in (12) are therefore the equiva- crease along a constant line on the voltage prole surface,
lent voltage source, equivalent load, and Thevenin impedance of for example, point 4 in Fig. 2. For ,
the two-bus equivalent model, and they represent the aggregate is infeasible since it would then not be on the voltage prole
effect of all voltage sources, loads, and impedances distributed surface. Thus all the tuples is the edge
in the -bus power system to be felt at the th bus. Separating line of the voltage prole surface, which constitutes the th bus
(13) into its real and imaginary parts gives voltage point-of-collapse (POC) boundary. Equation (18) is also
the equation of the projection of this boundary onto the
(14) plane; it therefore describes the th bus voltage stability
(15) boundary condition on this plane. It is further shown that the
nodal voltage sensitivity of the two-bus equivalent model at the
Summing the square of (14) and (15), and simplifying yields
th bus, or called the equivalent nodal voltage sensitivity, also
becomes innite at the boundary condition of (18). For this pur-
pose, the partial and total differential of the th bus voltage
with respect to the equivalent load can be derived from
(16)
(16) as
Equation (16) represents the voltage prole surface of the th
(20)
bus as a function of its equivalent MVA load and voltage
source ;an example is shown in Fig. 2. The th bus voltage
is therefore constrained on this surface described by (16) as the
(21)
operating point changes, for example, the power ow path in
Fig. 2. At a particular operating point, the corresponding
and can be computed from its power ow solution according where
to (12), and the th bus voltage magnitude is related according
to (16) as

(17) At the boundary condition of (18), , i.e.,

where , , and (20), (21) becomes
, , and .
It is seen that (17) is feasible if and only if (22)

(18)
Thus the equivalent nodal voltage sensitivity also becomes in-
may be interpreted as the effective load at the th bus; it nite at the boundary condition of (18).
represents the effectiveness of the equivalent load at this Since the innitesimal increment of , are independent
bus. variables, then
At the boundary condition of (18), i.e., , the
th bus voltage is determined from (17) as

(19)
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4 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER SYSTEMS

Thus

(23)

Therefore the and nodal voltage sensitivities, as de-

ned in (8), also become innite at the boundary condition of
(18).
From the foregoing analytical development in Section III,
it was established from (7) and (8) that the modal and nodal
voltage sensitivities of the Jacobian matrix become identically
innite when the latter becomes singular. On the other hand, it Fig. 3. Geometric representation of distances to point-of-collapse.
was also established from (18), (22), and (23) that the voltage
stability boundary condition of the two-bus equivalent model at
the th bus also implied the equivalent nodal and Jacobian ma- represent measures of distance or proximity to the point-of-col-
trix nodal sensitivities identically becoming innite. From these lapse. We can then dene two indices, the voltage distance to
above, a chain of related mathematical relationships may be in- collapse (VDC) and load distance to collapse (LDC), as
ferred as summarized in the following: (25)

(26)

so that the total effective distance to collapse (EDC) can be de-

ned as

Therefore the voltage stability boundary condition and the

equivalent nodal voltage sensitivity of the two-bus equivalent
It can be shown that
model capture the essential modal and nodal voltage stability
information of the Jacobian matrix, and can thus be equiva-
lently used in the voltage stability assessment of the -bus (27)
power system. Moreover the attributes of the modal sensitivity Thus,
method, such as critical nodes and participation factors, may be
similarly derived for the two-bus equivalent method, as shown The VDC represents a voltage distance since it is the geo-
in the following. metric distance between the th bus current voltage and prox-
imity voltage to the point-of-collapse, as seen from Fig. 3. On
IV. DISTANCES TO VOLTAGE COLLAPSE the other hand, the LDC represents a load distance since it is the
geometric distance between the th bus current and maximum
As seen from (17), the th bus voltage comprises a mean
effective load, as seen from Fig. 3. Note that Fig. 3 is the pro-
and discriminant component, given by
jection onto the plane of a constant line on the
(24) voltage prole surface. Note also the dimension of the load dis-
tance multiplied with bus impedance is that of voltage square.
where
V. CRITICAL BUS NODES
Since the EDC is a measure of both voltage and load distance
of the th bus to the point-of-collapse, it is conceivably an effec-
tive measure of bus criticality with respect to voltage collapse.
Accordingly, the criticality of all buses can be ranked by their
EDCs, such that the most critical th bus is given by
It is observed that
(28)

As seen from (27), EDC can provide a good perspective of prox-

imity to the point-of-collapse, since it takes into account both the
diminishing bus voltage and load distance aspects of the voltage
Thus and diminish to zero as the operating point collapse. Thus a bus can have an alarmingly low voltage, i.e.,
approaches the point-of-collapse when . Therefore they small VDC, but may still be loadable, i.e., a sufciently large
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LEE: VOLTAGE STABILITY ASSESSMENT USING EQUIVALENT NODAL ANALYSIS 5

and the th bus. Thus the voltage source contribution magnitude

as a proportion of the sum of all voltage source contribution
magnitudes represents the participation of the th gener-
ator in the voltage support at the th load bus, given by

(30)

Fig. 4. Illustration of the EDC as a measure of collapse distance.

As seen from (30), since is a scalar proportion of the
voltage source contributions by all generators, it thus represents
LDC, such that its EDC is still sufciently large; see Fig. 4(a) for the participation of the th generator in contributing voltage sup-
example. On the other hand, a bus can have a deceptively high port to the th bus.
voltage, i.e., a large VDC, but is already within proximity to
voltage collapse, i.e., a small LDC, such that its EDC is reveal- C. Branch Participation Factors
ingly small; see Fig. 4(b) for example. Therefore the combined If the impedance matrix is obtained by inverting the ad-
effect of both VDC and LDC gives a truer indication of prox- mittance matrix , then the th off-diagonal and th diagonal
imity to voltage collapse, and thus the EDC is an effective mea- element of are given by
sure of the bus criticality.

VI. PARTICIPATION FACTORS

A. Load Participation Factors

As seen from (12), the th bus equivalent MVA load (31)
is the weighted sum of all the MVA loads in the -bus power
system. Since the th bus MVA load comprises an active and
reactive load component, their respective contribution to the th where and are respectively the cofactor of
bus equivalent active and reactive load can be dened as the off-diagonal element and diagonal element ,
the determinant, of the admittance matrix. Since is also the
Thevenin impedance of the two-bus equivalent model at the th
bus, its Thevenin admittance is given by

(29) (32)

As seen from (29), these contributions are the proportions of and noting that and , ,
the th bus load to the corresponding th bus equivalent load, where is the th branch admittance.
and are thus measures of participation of the th bus loads in The numerator terms of comprise only the th branch
the load stress at the th bus. The participation depends on the admittances and th bus shunt admittance (the cofac-
th bus load's transfer impedance and voltage tors are independent of these admittances); each thus represents
weights, which are respectively analogous to the mode shape the admittance contribution to . Its proportion
and excitation weights of the Jacobian eigenmodes in [7]. Thus of represents the participation of the th branch
the transfer impedance and voltage weights may also be called admittance in the th Thevenin admittance; thus
the th bus impedance shape and load voltage excitation. The
impedance shape represents the electrical connectivity or ability
of the th load to participate in the load stress at the th bus,
while the load voltage excitation represents the intensity of this
participation. Together they represent the degree of participa- (33)
tion of the th bus load at the th bus. It is also seen that the
Using (31) and (32) in (33) yields
impedance shape depends only on the transfer impedance and
not on the bus loading. (34)
B. Generator Participation Factors Similar to the treatment of the generator participation factors,
As seen in (12), the equivalent voltage source at the th the scalar participation factor is dened as
bus comprises the sum of the voltage source contribution by
every generator, which is a vector product of the generator cur-
rent and transfer impedance between the generator terminal bus
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6 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER SYSTEMS

(35)

Thus represents the degree which the th branch partic-

ipates in facilitating voltage support to the th bus. Therefore a
path traversing branches, each with the largest participation
factor of all branches connected at that same bus, can be traced
starting from the th to a generation source bus. This represents
the strongest voltage support path of that generation source to
the th bus.

VII. COMPARISON WITH OTHER INDICES

The merit of the EDC can be illustrated by comparing it with
other nodal indices that also do not require post power ow Fig. 5. Determining load increment step size.
processing of the Jacobian matrix, for example, the works in
[2] and [12]. In [2], the indicator was proposed for the th
bus as with a single base power ow solution. However this was only
possible by assuming a constant Thevenin voltage (by ) in-
stead of varying as in this work, and constant impedance
loads at the other non-referred buses. Thus as reported in [12],
the analytic POC load was higher than that determined by re-
(36)
peated power ow solutions.
It is thus seen from above that the indices proposed in [2] and
where is the th diagonal element of . , , [12] were based on certain assumptions and approximations. On
, and are block matrices of the block-partitioned the other hand, the EDC makes no approximations but is simply
matrix . , , , and are block matrices, each com- derived from the reduction of a complete set of voltage-current
prising some combinations of the block matrices. , injection equations that fulll fundamental network laws. In this
of dimension , comprise self and transfer admittance respect, the EDC is thus mathematical exact and deemed to be
elements among the load buses only. It was postulated in [2], a true nodal indicator of voltage instability.
deducing from a similar relationship in a two-bus system, that
at the POC load of the th bus, and thus for VIII. CONSIDERATIONS FOR PRACTICAL SYSTEMS
the system to be voltage stable. However, numerical results The basic concepts of the proposed method have been de-
of a test system showed that exceeded 1 at the POC load. scribed in Sections IIIVI. For application to practical and large
This discrepancy can be explained by rst noting , power systems, further aspects such as computational algorithm
thus giving , where is a block matrix and speed, reactive limits, and typical equipment models also
of block-partitioned matrix corresponding to . Substi- need to be considered. These are discussed in the following.
tuting the th diagonal element of , i.e., ,
into in (36) gives . Thus A. Computational Algorithm and Speed
when the POC load is reached, , A computational advantage of the proposed method is its
and applying (19) gives . If is non-requirement for post power ow solution processing of the
redened , then and Jacobian matrix. However, further computational gain may be
at the POC load, and . Thus the indicator derived by using an adaptive scheme to determine the load in-
approximates the true indicator which relates closely to the crement step size. This will reduce the number of power ow
EDC. solutions required to reach the POC load. The adaptive scheme
In [12], the Thevenin equivalent circuit of the system at depends on the operating point path to the POC, in which there
the th bus was derived from its base power ow solution and are four characteristic types as seen in Fig. 5.
impedance matrix, with the Thevenin impedance and If the operating point path is either convex or concave mono-
voltage , base th bus voltage and load impedance tonic increasing, i.e., for
given as in Fig. 5(iii) and (iv), the new effective load
to step to the next operating point can be estimated from the in-
tersection of the current operating point constant line with
(37)
the POC boundary. Thus
Thus using (13)(18) on the two-bus equivalent model consti-
tuted by the th bus load impedance and the Thevenin circuit of
(37), an analytic expression of the POC load could be derived (38)
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LEE: VOLTAGE STABILITY ASSESSMENT USING EQUIVALENT NODAL ANALYSIS
where the superscript , refers to the next and current
operating point respectively. For example in Fig. 5(iii), the ef-
fective load at point 2 is estimated from the current operating
point 1 using (38), and the next operating point 3 is obtained
with the power ow solution for this new effective load. The
new effective load needs to be translated to the actual MVA load
at the bus. Such adaptive scheme for a monotonic increasing op-
erating point path guarantees convergence to the POC load as
seen from Fig. 5(iii) and (iv).
If the operating point is either convex or concave monotonic
decreasing, i.e., for
in Fig. 5(i) and (ii), the next operating point power ow solu-
tion will not converge using the above adaptive scheme since
the current operating point constant line intersects the POC
boundary beyond the POC effective load . As such a
modied adaptive scheme uses an estimated gradient at the cur-
rent operating point to intersect the POC boundary to obtain an
intermediate effective load beyond given by
(39)
The new effective load to step to the next operating point is then
determined as
(40)
For example in Fig. 5(i), the intermediate effective load at
point 2 is estimated from the current operating point 1 using
(39), and the new effective load at point 3 with (40). The next
operating point 4 is obtained with the power ow solution for
this new effective load. It is noted that the modied adaptive
scheme described by (39) and (40) for a convex monotonic de-
creasing path does not guarantee convergence to the POC load,
in which case the solution has to revert to a xed load incre-
ment step size scheme. Similarly for non-characteristic type of
operating point path, a xed load increment step size scheme is
required.
B. Reactive Limits
The reactive power output of generators is limited by their
permissible maximum stator currents. Hence when generators
are operating at their reactive limits, they are merely injecting
maximum currents into their node buses with uncontrolled ter-
minal voltages, but the network voltage-current injection equa-
tions still apply normally as in the non-limited condition. Conse-
quently the mathematical reduction of these network equations
into the two-bus equivalent and the concomitant EDC are still
valid.
However the system path (trajectory on a parametric plane)
deviates at the point when some generators become reac-
tive-limited, from the would-be non-reactive-limited path, and
evolves along a new reactive-limited path. For example in
Fig. 2, the path 25 deviates from path 2-3-4 at point 2. On
the parametric plane, the trajectory has a discontinuity at the
deviation point, for example, point 2' of the trajectory on the
plane in Fig. 6. The power ow then solves to point
7
Fig. 6. Piece-wise continuity due to generator reactive limits.
instead of point 3' on the would-be non reactive-limited
path, because the equivalent voltage source is now reduced
due to the reactive limit on some of the generators. From point
, the power ow continues to solve along the reactive-limited
path until point when a new batch of generators becomes
reactive-limited. Thus the power ow solves to point ,
instead of point , on another new reactive-limited path. Thus
the resulting trajectory has a series of discontinuity points with
the intervening sections being piece-wise continuous. At these
discontinuity points, their derivatives are undened,
but (39) approximates the derivatives by nite difference since
their analytic expression is not available. Thus the adaptive
scheme will practically still work for a piece-wise continuous
trajectory under a generator reactive-limited situation.
C. Typical Equipment Models
In practical power systems, there may be various types of
equipment and devices that impact on the system voltage sta-
bility. These also need to be modeled as in the analysis of the
proposed method.
Typical equipment and devices that affect system voltage sta-
bility include static ZIP loads, static var compensators (SVC),
HVDC converters, and large induction motors. Essentially
their active and reactive powers can be modeled
as voltage dependent loads, with their voltage sensitivity
, incorporated into the Jacobian
matrix and the power ow solved in the usual way. However
their solved instead of initial active and reactive powers have
to be used in the equivalent nodal analysis.
IX. CASE STUDY
The proposed method was applied to the IEEE 300-bus test
system, obtained from [21]. This system has a load demand of
about 23 569 MW and operating voltages are 66 kV and below,
115 kV, 138 kV, 230 kV, and 345 kV. The system schematic
diagram is depicted in three parts called system 1, 2, and 3, but
only system 1 is shown in Fig. 9 as it will mainly be used to
illustrate the proposed method.
The EDC of all buses in the system were computed for normal
load conditions. The 30 weakest buses (ranked by ascending
EDC) are located within 6 areas but only the areas in system
1 (3 of 3 as shaded in Fig. 9) and one area in system 2 (1 of 2)
are selected for our analysis. The 10 weakest buses among the 4
areas considered are listed in Table I. MW load stress was then
increasingly applied one at a time at bus 173 and 113, and the 10
weakest buses corresponding to the POC load where the power
ow failed to converge are given in Table I. The corresponding
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8 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER SYSTEMS

TABLE I
EDC RANKING OF CRITICAL BUSES

TABLE II
PARTICIPATION FACTORS FOR LOAD STRESS AT BUS 113

Fig. 7. Bus EDC for load stress at bus 113.

load, generation, and branch participation factors for the stress

applied at bus 113 are given in Table II.
It is rstly seen from Table I that the EDC of the load stressed
bus reduced to zero when the power ow failed to converge,
which is consistent with the inference of (27), i.e., its EDC is
identically zero at the POC. For example, the EDC of bus 113
reduced to zero when the load stress was applied there as clearly
seen in Fig. 7. As also seen in Fig. 8, the load ow path reached
the POC stability boundary on the plane corresponding
to the EDC becoming zero in Fig. 7. However, note that the EDC
of another bus instead of the load stressed bus may reduce to
zero rst, implying the former being a weaker bus affected more
by the non-resident load stress. Secondly, the weakest buses cor-
responding to the POC load stress comprised the pre-stressed
weakest buses though their relative ranking changed, for ex-
ample, when load stress was applied at bus 173. However new
buses in close electrical proximity to the load stressed bus may
also have emerged in the weakest bus list with higher relative
ranking, and so pushing out some of the pre-stressed weakest
buses. For example, new buses 47, 109, 110, and 114 in the
vicinity of bus 113 emerged when load stress was applied at the
latter, thus excluding some pre-stressed buses 173, 175, 178,
and 179 in system 2. Thus in tracking critical buses, it is neces-
sary to include the pre-stressed weakest buses and those in the
system area where the load stress is expected to occur.
The bus 113 voltage was also calculated using (17) and
plotted (cross marks) in Fig. 7. As seen, it matched exactly with
its power ow voltage solution, thus verifying (17).
For effective illustration of the use of the participation factors,
the results for the load stress applied at bus 113 are used since
it is within the most extensive area (in terms of the number of
buses) among the 4 areas considered.
As seen from Table II, the path traced branches with the
highest participation factor from bus 113 to bus 39 (this and
bus 7039 are respectively the generator step-up transformer high
and low voltage bus) as shown by the thick lines in Fig. 9. This
Fig. 8. Power ow path of bus 113 bus on the plane.
path represents the most efcient electrical connectivity be-
tween a generation source and the load stressed bus to facili-
tate its voltage support [effected by path 's large branch ad-
mittances and small bus transfer impedances as inferred from
(34)]. This is evidenced by the total branch impedances of path
being only 0.093 pu compared with 0.182 pu of just the gener-
ator step-up transformer impedance at bus 44 (this and bus 7044
are respectively the generator step-up transformer high and low
voltage bus). Thus path sought out a low impedance path and
terminated at bus 39 (7039) which is topological-wise further
from but electrically nearer to bus 113 than bus 44 (7044). How-
ever, the most efcient path may not terminate at the most
effective generation source. As seen from Table II, the gener-
ators at buses 7039 and 7044 are ranked lower than those at
buses 108 and 76, meaning the latter are more effective with re-
spect to providing voltage support to the load stressed bus 113.
Thus an effective generation source and efcient branch path,
i.e., having high participation factors, are both essential in con-
tributing strong voltage support to the load stressed bus.
The six MW loads with the highest participation in the load
stress at bus 113 are given in Table II. These loads have high
participation factors due to their close proximity to bus 113 (see
Fig. 9); thus they contributed strongly to its equivalent load. In
 This article has been accepted for inclusion in a future issue of this journal. Content is final as presented, with the exception of pagination.
LEE: VOLTAGE STABILITY ASSESSMENT USING EQUIVALENT NODAL ANALYSIS
Fig. 9. IEEE 300-bus test system used for the case study.
TABLE III
COMPUTATION TIMES FOR NODAL AND MODAL METHODS
contrast, a single large load at bus 17 (561 MW) or bus 20 (595
MW) still have low participation factors (0.0018 and
, respectively) due to their small impedance shapes with
respect to bus 113 (0.00151 and correspondingly).
To demonstrate the computational efciency of the pro-
posed method, the POC load for the 10 weakest buses in
Table I were computed using the adaptive scheme outlined in
Section VIII-A and also the xed scheme with an arbitrary
30-MW load step increase. The total power ow time taken
for a POC load computation run using each respective scheme
are denoted as Ta (adaptive) and Tf (xed), respectively. The
nodal (EDC) and modal (minimum eigenvalue) indices were
also computed at each load step (after power ow converged)
of a POC load computation run using the adaptive scheme, and
the total time taken are denoted as Tn (nodal) and Tm (modal),
respectively. The power ow and indices were computed using
MATLAB running on an Intel processor, 1.7 GHz, 4 GB
RAM personal computer. The computation results are given in
Table III.
It is rstly seen from Table III that Ta are fairly consistent,
averaging 25 s, for all the buses computed. This implies that the
adaptive scheme is reliably robust since a representative number
of buses with different network locations, voltage levels, and
types of stability boundary were analyzed. Secondly,
9
the adaptive scheme is consistently faster than the xed scheme
for all the buses computed. Although the rela-
tive speed gains vary widely, i.e., between 13% and 69%, this is
rather due to Tf than Ta being inconsistent and still an average
relative speed gain of 32% is achieved. The relative speed gain
would be even higher if a smaller load step, say 20 MW, was
used for the xed scheme. Moreover, Tn is extremely fast when
compared to Tm, i.e., Tm/Tn being between 80 and 100 times.
Thus the proposed method is deemed to be computationally effi-
cient. Thirdly, the differences between the POC loads computed
using the adaptive (Pa) and xed (Pf) scheme are less than 5.5%
for all the buses analyzed, implying that the adaptive scheme is
fairly accurate despite taking larger load steps than the xed
scheme.
X. CONCLUSIONS
This paper had presented a simple method for voltage sta-
bility assessment by reducing the bus impedance matrix of a net-
work to facilitate an equivalent nodal analysis at a referred bus
to determine its voltage stability limit. It was also shown that the
method could identify critical buses and quantify contribution of
network elements to their criticality, through use of geometric
indices and participation factors, respectively. The method is
potentially suitable for online applications since it uses only
the power ow solution to compute these quantities. The IEEE
300-bus system was tested with the method which was shown
to be valid, reliably robust, computationally efcient, and accu-
rate. Consequently the method could be developed into a useful
planning and operation tool.
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Denis Hau Aik Lee (M'1988) was born in Kuching, Malaysia. He received the
B.Eng. degree from the National University of Singapore in 1984 and the Ph.D.
degree from the Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, Sweden, in 1998.
Currently he is employed with the Sarawak Electricity Supply Corporation,
an electricity utility of the Sarawak Energy Berhad group of companies in
Sarawak, East Malaysia. His technical interests include power system stability,
dynamics, and control, and ac/dc interactions in HVDC systems.