Unified sensitivity analysis of unstable or low voltages caused by load increases or contingencies

This work deals with the analysis of situations where load increases and/or contingencies cause transmission voltages to become unstable or unacceptably low. Simple sensitivities are proposed to determine the relative efficiency of candidate remedial actions, which are parameter changes likely to strengthen the system. To this purpose, the sensitivities of the bus voltage magnitude experiencing the largest drop are considered. In the neighborhood of a loadability limit or a critical point, it is shown that these sensitivities and those based on eigenvalue and eigenvector computation are essentially the same. However, the proposed analysis can also deal with low but stable situations. The accuracy of the proposed sensitivities is demonstrated on the models of two real systems, in which the parameters of concern are bus power injections.

I. Introduction

Voltage security has become an important aspect of power system planning, operational planning and real-time operation [1]–[2] [3]. Many transmission system operators (TSOs) quote voltage problems as a limiting factor to the secure operation of their systems.