IET Generation, Transmission & Distribution

Research Article

ISSN 1751-8687
Searching severest VSM basing on CCPF Received on 20th March 2017
Revised 7th September 2017
among multiple dispatch centres Accepted on 2nd October 2017
E-First on 31st January 2018
doi: 10.1049/iet-gtd.2017.0450
www.ietdl.org
Zhengwei Ren1 , Ying Chen1, Shaowei Huang1, Lu Zhang1
1
Electrical Engineering, Tsinghua University, Haidian, Beijing, People's Republic of China E-
mail: rzw15@mails.tsinghua.edu.cn

Abstract: It is important to search voltage stability margin (VSM) of an interconnected power system in order to determine secure
operation constraints. Traditionally, centralised continuation power flow (CPF) is used, which may fail to model the varied load
growth directions of different regional power grids. In this study, a distributed VSM searching method is proposed grounding on a
coordinated CPF (CCPF) performed by neighbouring dispatch centres. First, a distributed power flow model for VSM is
established, which considers the automatic allocation of network loss. Then, a critical bus of the power system is used to indicate
the system-level voltage stability. It is chosen according to the sensitivity of the minimum singular value of Jacobi matrix to nodal
voltage amplitudes, and the sensitivity of boundary power injection to nodal voltage amplitudes. Moreover, the gradient of critical
bus voltage amplitude to regional loading parameters is computed, which is set as the load growth direction for the current step.
The severest VSM is obtained by solving the CCPF iteratively along the worst load growth direction. Tests on IEEE 118 bus
system and a real power grid of China validate the proposed method in the enhancement of the security for
interconnected power systems. circuits, which are termed as channel circuits. Then, by calculating
CPF of the critical channel circuit, the VSM of the whole system can
1 Introduction be accurately estimated with high
The voltage stability is a crucial issue in power system operation.
The voltage stability margin (VSM) outlines the boundary of the efficiency. Generally, aforementioned methods suits for
maximum load supply for a given power system. Traditionally, centralised analysis of a single regional power grid. However, when
the VSM is estimated by using continuation power flow (CPF), coordinated analyses among regional control centres are required, a
which searches for the maximum load supply regarding voltage distributed computational model of CPF becomes indispensable.
stability constraints. For interconnected power systems, different
Normally, a regional dispatch centre only has models of its
regions have varied load growth directions, which should be
territory power grid. It usually uses equivalences of external grids
modelled when searching the VSM. A load growth direction during power flow analyses, which could introduce substantial errors
resulting in the minimum VSM is termed as the worst one, while to results. To circumvent this issue, coordinated analysis methods
the resultant VSM can be denoted as the severest VSM (SVSM).
based on distributed computing techniques have been proposed for
In this work, a VSM searching method based on the coordinated
interconnected power systems. In [10–13], distributed power flow
CPF (CCPF) is proposed, where computational coordination methods have been presented. In [10, 11], boundary equations are
among multiple dispatch centres is enabled for searching SVSM formulated, which incorporate regional power flows and power
of an interconnected power system. balances of link lines. By solving boundary equations iteratively,
Some previous work has considered varied load growth regional power flows are regulated to global-converged results. In
directions while searching the VSM. In [1], sensitivities of nodal [12, 13], boundary equations are modified to reduce information
load growths on VSM are analysed by linear and quadratic exchanges and allocate network losses accurately among regional
estimations, which help to determine effective controls to avoid power grids. Other coordinated analyses such as distributed state
voltage collapse. Similar studies can be found in [2], where estimation [14], optimal power flow [15] and transient dynamic
patterns of load growths and generation re-dispatch are modelled simulations [11] have also been investigated. These works prove that
for accurately estimating the VSM. In [3], a nodal load growth coordinated analyses are theoretically feasible for online
model called ‘hyper-cone’ is established, basing on which the applications of interconnected power systems.
SVSM can be obtained. This method includes uncertainties into In this work, a distributed VSM searching method is proposed to
the load growth model while ignoring reactive power limits of determine the SVSM of interconnected power systems. This method
generators for simplifications. In [4], VSM is assessed using
is based on the CCPF and carried out by multiple dispatch centres.
varied regional load growths obtained by load forecast. This
To detect VSM without centralised processes, a synergic index is
approach can find VSM which is closer to the practical situation developed to choose a critical bus at each load level in a distributed
compared with centralised CPF. It can be seen that in above way. Voltage of this critical bus can represent the voltage stability of
works, regional load growth directions have not been modelled
the whole power systems during CCPF. Then, the gradient of the
in detail, which are important for searching SVSM of
critical bus voltage respecting to loading parameters is evaluated for
interconnected power systems. searching the worst regional load growth direction. Thus, the SVSM
Several methods have been proposed to improve the CPF can be searched by the CCPF, which is developed by combining the
during searching the VSM. In [5, 6], an iterative non-linear solver multi-regional load growths and distributed power flow models.
is adopted to accelerate CPF, where preconditioners are formed Especially, the distributed power flow model is modified to consider
according to the structure of power flow equations. In [7], the the varied network loss allocations along with load growths in each
rectangular coordinates are used in formulating CPF, which tends regional power grid. Two case studies are provided to validate the
to be numerically stable and fast converged. In [8, 9], one power proposed models and method, where the IEEE 118 bus system and
grid is transformed into a set of decoupled source-line-load
the southwest power grid of China are taken as test systems.
Comparisons between the proposed method and centralised VSM
searching with unified load growths as well as the regional
analysis with equivalences are
Fig. 1  Physical and cyber connections between dispatch centres
Fig. 2  Procedures of SVSM searching
made. Test results show that the proposed method can obtain the
SVSM effectively, which is useful to determine conservative
power transfer limits between regional power grids.
The rest of this paper is organised as follows. In Section 2, the
physical and cyber connections among dispatch centres as well
as the SVSM are described. In Section 3, a synergic index for
choosing the critical bus is given in detailed formula expression.
In Section 4, CCPF basing on the distributed power flow is
introduced with specific boundary equations for distributed
power flow model. Section 5 provides test results of the proposed
method and Section 6 makes the conclusion.
2 Problem description
2.1 Coordinated analysis by multiple dispatch centres
As shown in Fig. 1, an interconnected power system is composed
of several regional power grids, which are physically connected
through link lines. Meanwhile, these regional power grids are
managed by corresponding regional dispatch centres. They are
also coordinated by a superior dispatch centre, which is
responsible for the security of the whole power system. Thus,
normally all regional dispatch centres are communicating with
the superior dispatch centre constantly through private networks.
For security operations, an interconnected power system
should be analysed as a whole, which helps to mitigate conflict
in dispatches of regional power grids. Hereby, coordinated
analysis basing on distributed computing becomes useful. It can
obtain global-converged analysis results while avoiding
complicated data integration and mismatches introduced by
inconsistent equivalences.
Dispatch centres can join a coordinated analysis by
exchanging partial results of local analyses. In this work, it is
assumed that each regional dispatch centre has a computation
server, which can perform power flow analysis of its territorial
grid using local data resources. Then, the superior dispatch centre
provides a coordination server. This server can communicate
with all computation servers and control the workflow of
coordinated analyses required.
2.2 SVSM of interconnected power systems
With a certain load growth direction, VSM of a power grid is
usually estimated by its maximum load level. Then, for an
interconnected power system with M regions, we can define the
SVSM of it as
M
SVSM ≜ mind ∈ T max i ∑= 1 pLdk (1)
s.t.∃k ∈ M, δmink = 0
pd
where L k is the load level of region k in load growth direction d. d
∈ T and T is the space of load growth directions. δmink is the minimum
singular value of the power flow Jacobi matrix of region k. It can be
seen that the SVSM is the minimum load level of the whole
interconnected power system constrained by its voltage stability.
2.3 Searching SVSM by CCPF
Fig. 2 outlines a workflow for searching SVSM of an interconnected
power system. In step 1, a critical bus is chosen, whose voltage
amplitude may indicate voltage stability level of the whole system.
Different from works concerning only a single power grid, this work
adopts a synergic index to choose such a critical bus. Among all
candidate buses, the one with significant influences on voltage
stability of regional power grid and power flows on link lines is
selected. In step 2, the worst load growth direction (WLD) is
obtained by analysing the gradient of critical bus voltage respecting
to regional load growths. In step 3, regional load levels are updated
along the WLD. The step size of regional load adjustments is
adaptively regulated when approaching SVSM. In step 4, the
distributed computation is carried out to obtain global-converged
power flow of the interconnected power system, which forms the
initial condition for the next round of searching procedures. Then,
step 1 is performed again at the new load level. The loop from steps
1 to 4 composes the CCPF proposed in this work.
3 Synergic index for choosing critical bus
To determine the WLD for searching VSM, a systematic index is
required to represent voltage stability of a power grid. In the
literature, a critical bus is usually chosen, whose voltage amplitude
is of the greatest sensitivity to the voltage stability of the whole
system. Such critical bus is also termed as a weak node in [16, 17]
or refers to the voltage unstable bus [18].
There are many approaches for identifying the critical bus. The
widely used methods are summarised in the literature [18], which
includes power flow-based method, sensitivity analysis,
optimisation-based approaches and modal (eigenvalue) analysis. In
this work, eigenvalue analysis is adopted to find the critical bus,
whose voltage is used for directing regional load growths during
CCPF.
However, the eigenvalue analysis method needs to compute the
minimum singular value of the power flow Jacobi matrix of the
whole system. As the coordinated analysis is concerned, to avoid
centralised processes and complicated data exchanges among
computation servers, a synergic index is developed here. It allows
the critical bus to be chosen in a distributed way, which can be
formulated as below:
cb ≜ {k, i} = arg maxk ∈ A imax∈ Ωk (Ek, i(δmink, Vi) − Rk, i(QkB, Vi)) (2)
where cb stands for the critical bus selected. It is defined by the index
of regional power grid and bus together. A is a set of regional power
grids, while Ωk is the bus set of regional grid k. Denote Sk, i = Ek, i(δmink
, Vi) − Rk, i(QkB, Vi). Ek, i(δmink , Vi) represents the influence of bus
δ k
voltage variation on the local voltage stability, where min denotes
the minimum singular value of Jacobi matrix of regional grid k
and Vi is the voltage amplitude of bus i. Rk, i(QkB, Vi) is a
cumulative influence factor of reactive injections from link lines
to bus voltages, where QkB is the cumulated reactive injection
from link lines to regional grid k.
It can be seen that two factors are considered during selecting
a critical bus including the sensitivity to local voltage stability
and reactive power injections from link lines. The solution of (2)
can be obtained by following distributed procedures.
δ k,
First, in a regional power grid, Ek, i( min Vi) and Rk, i(QkB, Vi)
δ k, V)
are evaluated for each bus. Here, Ek, i( min i is evaluated by the
minimum sensitivity of the singular value to bus voltages as
Fig. 3  Division of power system
Ek, i
(3) i
δ
where ∂ mink /∂Vi can be calculated basing on power flow
solution of regional grid k using method introduced in [19, 20].
δ interconnected power systems, the relation between Vcb and λ is very
Ek, i( mink , Vi) > 0, and this value for critical bus should be
relatively large.
Moreover, Rk, i(QkB, Vi) is evaluated as below:
mk
Rk, i(QkB, Vi) = ∑ ∂∂QVkBi, l
l=1
where mk is the number of boundary buses belonging to regional
grid k on link lines, QkB, l is the reactive power injection from
boundary bus l. Rk, i(QkB, Vi) < 0 and its absolute value should be
relatively large for critical bus. Simply, ∂QkB, l/∂Vi can be
obtained from Jacobi matrix of power flow equations.
δ k,
It should be noted that: (i) both Ek, i( min Vi) and Rk, i(Qk Vi)
are only computed for PQ buses, since Vi of PV buses and slack
bus remain constant when loads increase. (ii) the regional power
flow can be performed with equivalent loads on boundary buses,
whose power injections are those from link lines and (iii) Ek,
δ k
i( min , Vi) is computed using Jacobi matrix of regional power
flow, while the external grids are equivalent as PQ loads on
δ
boundary buses. Rk, i(QkB, Vi) is a supplement for Ek, i( mink , Vi),
which reflects the influences of inter-regional reactive power
exchanges on local voltage stability. (iv) when the
interconnected power system approaches its SVSM, the critical
bus voltage will drop substantially and reactive power demands
on all boundary buses will also be increased. Then, by observing
reactive power injections from local boundary buses, a regional
dispatch centre may estimate voltage profile of the whole power
system. Thus, Rk, i(QkB, Vi) serves as an indicator for selecting a local
bus, whose voltage drops may cause maximum increments of
reactive power demands across regions.
Second, candidates of critical buses can be obtained by localised
analysis in each regional power grid. They are ranked by each
computation server according to their values of Sk, i. Then, the top
buses will be sent to the coordination server as candidate buses.
Finally, among all candidates, the one with the greatest Sk, i will be
regarded as the critical bus for the whole power system, whose bus
voltage will be broadcasted among computation servers during
CCPF.
4 CCPF based on distributed power flow
4.1 Determine the worst regional load growths
Denote load levels of regional power grids as a vector λ = [λ1, λ2, …,
λM]. Then, for increasing load levels during searching SVSM, the
worst regional load growths can be defined as Δλ = Δλ1, Δλ2, …, ΔλM
, which can be obtained by the following expression:
Δλ = s ⋅ ∂∂Vλcb ∥ ∂∂Vλcb ∥2 (5)
In (5), Vcb is the voltage amplitude of the critical bus. ∂Vcb/∂λ is the
gradient vector of critical bus voltage to regional load growths as
below:
∂k
∂ ∂ ∂
∂Vcb = ∂Vλcb1 , ∂Vλcb2 , …, ∂VλMcb . (6) ∂λ
Denote the function of Vcb respecting to λ as Vcb = fcb(λ). For
complex, especially when there are several regions. The load
changes in one region will lead to cross-regional interactions. So,
Vcb = fcb(λ) is an implicit mapping from regional load levels to critical
bus voltage constrained by global-converged power flow. Therefore,
it is more convenient to compute (6) through finite difference
operations as follows:
(4)
f
Step 1: Perform distributed power flow to obtain Vcb = cb(λ1, …, λi, …,
λM). λ = [λ1, …, λM] is the current load level. M is the number of
regional power grids.
Step 2: For i = 1, 2, …, M, perform distributed power flow to obtain
Vcb′ = fcb(λ1, …, λi + ζ, …, λM). ζ is a small increment,
which is termed as the difference step.
Step 3: Compute ∂Vcb/∂λi = (Vcb′ − Vcb)/ζ, let i = i + 1. If i ⩽ M, go to
step 2; otherwise, stop the computation and output ∂Vcb/∂λ.
B,
The above procedures enable the evaluation of the gradient ∂Vcb/∂λ
using the finite difference operations, which can also be abbreviated
as (7)
)
, …, λi + ζ, …, λMζ) − fcb(λ1, …, λi, …, λM (7)
Moreover, ∥ ∂Vcb/∂λ ∥2 is the 2-norm of the gradient vector, which
is used to normalise the regional load growth direction. Then, an
increment step s > 0 is adopted to adjust regional load growths
adaptively. When the distributed power flow of the interconnected
power system fails to converge, s will be reduced gradually.
4.2 Distributed power flow model and algorithm
A distributed power flow model considering automatic network
loss allocation is presented. Corresponding boundary equations
are established, which are solved by the algorithms proposed in
[21].
An interconnected power system is divided into two regional
power grids connected by link lines as shown in Fig. 3.
Voltages and power injections on boundary buses are marked
in Fig. 3. Especially, each region has a slack bus, whose voltage
and power injection are denoted as V0i and θ0i, P0i and Q0i,
respectively.
Suppose that all boundary buses are modelled as PQ buses
during power flow calculations. Then, the procedures of
distributed power flow are given as below:
Step 1: Data exchange: Coordination server sends PBt ,
to computation servers.
Step 2: Computation servers: Compute regional power flow to
obtain
[UB, Ploss] = fΩ(PBt , QBt , θ0t);
Step 3: Data exchange: Computation servers send UB and Ploss to
coordination server. Step 4: Coordination server: Set
UB~ = UB
and compute the link line power injections
[PB~, QB~] = fAll(UB~),
then check
PBt − PB~ = 0
that gets boundary bus voltages from converged results of regional
power flows with given boundary conditions. fAll( ⋅ ) is another
function, which calculates power injections on boundary buses in the
link line partition. Ploss = Ploss, 1, Ploss, 2 is a vector of network losses of
regional power grid, which can also be obtained from converged
P
power flows. lossall is the cumulated network loss of the whole
interconnected power system. K = k1, k2 is a vector of allocation
factors of overall network loss. Its value is given automatically
during iteration process, where 1 > ki > 0 and ∑ki = 1 for i = 1, 2.
It can be seen that computation servers carry out the regional
power flow in (8); coordination server evaluates (10), and then
checks (11) or further processes (12) and (13). Within each round of
Q distributed power flow computation, the exchanged data are:
B
t and θ0t
Q
coordination server sends PBt , Bt and θ0t to computation servers
belong to different regional power grids; each computation server
sends UB and Ploss to coordination server.
Equation (11) is the boundary equations. By solving (11), global-
converged power flow results can be obtained in a distributed way.
Q
(8) After given boundary conditions as {PBt , Bt , θ0t}, each regional
dispatch centre can solve local power flow on its computation server.
Then, UB can be gained and sent to the coordination server, which
physically refers to the link line partition. Power balances and
(9) network loss allocations can be checked at the coordination server.
If all equations in (11) are matched, global convergence of
distributed power flow is reached. Otherwise, the coordinate server
will use the JFNG (m) method proposed in [21] to compute ΔPB, ΔQB
(10) Q
and Δθ0 from the residuals dPB, d B and dPloss. Then, the boundary
conditions are adjusted to start another round of iteration. Readers
can see [10, 11] for the related work flow.

QBt − QB~ = 0 (11) Ploss − K ⋅ Plossall = 0 4.3 CCPF model and workflow

If (11) satisfies, the distributed power flow is converged. The CCPF can be formulated as below:
Otherwise, evaluate the residuals using (12) and go to step 5
G(Y, λ) = 0 (14)
PBt − PB~ = dPB
where λ = [λ1, λ2, …, λM] is the regional load level vector, Y = {yi}, i ∈
QBt − QB~ = dQB (12) Ωk is a set of algebraic variables (bus voltages) used in local power
flow equations of each regional power grid. For approaching SVSM,
Ploss − K ⋅ Plossall = dPloss the worst load growths are estimated by (5). Then, the regional load
level is updated as λ = λ + Δλ, after which regional generations and
Step 5: Coordinate server: According to residuals dPB, dQB and loads are increased by (15)
dPloss, compute ΔPB, ΔQB and Δθ0 through JFNG (m) method [21,
pGk = pG0 k + λk ⋅ pG0 k
Q
22]. Revise PBt , B
t and θ0t as (13) and go to step 1 pLk = pL0 k + λk ⋅ pL0 k (15) qLk = qL0 k + λk ⋅ qL0 k

PBt + 1 = PBt + ΔPB

p p q
where Gk, Lk and
represent the active power generation, active
Lk
QBt + 1 = QBt + ΔQB (13) p p q
load and reactive load of region k. G0 k, L0 k and L0 k are
θ0t + 1 = θ0t + Δθ0 corresponding values from its base power flow.
As a summary, the CCPF is carried out by the following five
In (8)–(13), UB = [θB, VB] is a vector of boundary bus voltages steps: Step 1: Record current regional load levels as λ¯ = λ.
given to regional power grids, UB = θB , VB is a vector of
~ ~ ~
Step 2: Choose the critical bus at the load level λ. With a given
boundary bus voltages given to link line partition. Similarly, PBt increment step s, calculate the worst load growths Δλ by (5) and (7).
Qt Q Step 3: Update regional load levels as λ = λ + Δλ. Then, increase
, B and PB~, B~ are vectors of power injections on boundary
regional generations and loads by (15).
buses observed in regional power grids and the link line partition. Step 4: Perform distributed power flow using computation and
θ0t stands for a vector of phases of slack buses in regional power coordination servers in dispatch centres. If it is converged, the
grids. t is the number of iterations. fΩ( ⋅ ) represents a function
 V
voltage of critical bus cb is gathered and recorded by the
V
coordination server. If cb is reduced comparing with last
recorded value, go to step 1. Otherwise go to step 5.
Step 5: If s < ε, stop CCPF and calculate SVSM according to
latest regional load levels. ε is a small threshold. Otherwise,
adjust the increment step as s = s × 0.1, reset load level as λ = λ¯
and go to step 2.