IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER SYSTEMS, VOL. 18, NO.
1, FEBRUARY 2003
Voltage-Stability Protection and Control Using a
Wide-Area Network of Phasor Measurements
Borka Milosevic, Student Member, IEEE, and Miroslav Begovic, Senior Member, IEEE
AbstractThis paper presents a concept for local monitoring of
the onset of voltage collapse, protective, and emergency control in
the presence of voltage-sensitive loads. The onset of voltage collapse
point is calculated based on the load characteristics and simulated
voltage and current phasors measurements, which are provided by
a network of phasor-measurement units. If the stability margin is
small and the reactive-power reserves are nearly exhausted, then
controls to steer the power system away from the critical point will
be activated.
Index TermsEmergency control, load modeling, protective re-
laying, voltage stability, voltage-stability index.
I. INTRODUCTION
V OLTAGE instabilities are often investigated using static
bifurcation model [1]. In recent years, significant atten-
tion has been given to the methods that use direct parametric
(load) dependence to estimate the proximity of a power system
to the voltage collapse. Some authors propose phasor-measure-
ment-based algorithms to determine voltage collapse proximity
[2][4]. This concept is attractive, since the technology for
synchronized, real-time measurements of voltage and incident
current phasors at the system buses is already available in the
form of phasor measurements from phasor measurement units
(PMUs) [5]. The main idea is that voltage phasors contain
enough information to detect voltage-stability margin directly
from their measurements. The voltage-stability condition is
derived from the two-bus equivalent of the systems calculated
in real time, assuming constant power loads [6]. It suggests
that in the critical condition, the two-bus equivalent generator
voltage phasor is twice as large as the projection of the load bus
voltage onto it. The proposed algorithms for the determination
of a two-bus equivalent differ [2][4].
However, voltage stability is affected by the load character-
istics (static and dynamic) [6][9]. For a constant power load,
the voltage-stability limit corresponds to the point of maximum
transfer. Nevertheless, voltage instability may occur beyond the
maximum power-transfer limit, (i.e., on the lower portion of the
curve), when the voltage-sensitive loads constitute a por-
tion of the total load. Hence, the estimates of voltage-stability
time margin, based on a well-known voltage-stability condition,
derived for a two-bus system, assuming a constant power load,
may be pessimistic and inaccurate for the systems with mixed
load types.
Manuscript received December 7, 2001; revised May 10, 2002.
The authors are with the School of Electrical and Computer Engi-
neering, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA 30332 USA (e-mail:
bm95@prism.gatech.edu; miroslav@ee.gatech.edu).
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TPWRS.2002.805018
0885-8950/02$17.00 2003 IEEE
121
Power systems become more vulnerable to voltage collapse
whenever generator reactive-power limits are encountered [10],
[11]. Encountering the reactive-power limits instantaneously
changes the dimension of the state space and the system
equations, causing discontinuous change in the stability margin
of the system. The system may become immediately unstable.
Therefore, the estimate of voltage-stability margin can be
misleading if not combined with generator reactive-power
limitations.
In this paper, we propose a wide-area network of phasor
measurement units as agents for voltage-stability monitoring
and control. The criticality of the current operating point is de-
termined based on the estimates of the voltage-stability margin
(calculated from the two-bus equivalents seen from every load
bus) and the estimates of generator reactive-power reserves.
This information is used to decide on appropriate control
actions, if any. Moreover, we address the effects of load models
on system voltage stability and extend the voltage-stability
condition based on a traditional two-bus system equivalent to
include the loads other than the constant power injections.
II. REAL-TIME EQUIVALENT OF THE SYSTEM
The local voltage-stability monitoring and control, at the
every time instant , are based on a time-dependent two-bus
equivalent, which consists of the generator that supplies
local load over the branch , as
shown in Fig. 1. The parameters of the voltage source and
line modeling the rest of the system, as seen from the local
bus at , are estimated from the time sequence of voltage and
current phasor measurements at the bus (see the Appendix) [4].
When a load is of the constant power type, a simple calcula-
tion shows that voltage instability point coincides with the point
of maximum power transfer [2][4], [11], producing the rela-
tionship between the voltage of an equivalent voltage source
and the voltage at a local load bus as follows:
(1)
Under the maximum power conditions, voltage drop across
the transmission impedance is equal to the load bus voltage
(see the voltage phasor diagram in Fig. 1)
(2)
Therefore, to assess the risk of voltage collapse in a presence
of constant power loads, the voltage-stability load bus index
(VSLBI), defined as in (3), needs to be monitored.
VSLBI (3)
122
Fig. 1. Load bus and the rest of the system represented as a voltage source,
transmission line, and the corresponding phasor diagram.
The VSLBI value close to one is indicative of proximity
to voltage collapse. It reaches unity when the power transfer
through becomes unstable for a voltage collapse. The
smallest value among all voltage-stability load-bus indices
VSLBI at a time instant provides the voltage-stability index
(VSI ) of the whole system
VSI VSLBI
where denotes the load-bus index and represents a set of
the system load buses. Comparison of VSLBI provides infor-
mation on relative vulnerability of various buses, which can be
used for remedial actions.
A. Reactive-Power Reserve Index
The two main causes of a reactive-power reaching a limit
in a generator are the excitation current limit and the armature
thermal limit [12]. Potentially adverse effects of generator reac-
tive capability limits on voltage stability are well known [10],
[11]. For heavy loading conditions, reactive-power produced by
the generator increases with load to maintain its terminal voltage
and when it reaches its limit, the generator loses voltage control
and switches from PV (constant terminal voltage) to PQ (con-
stant reactive-power output) mode of operation. At the transition
points, VSI changes abruptly. The outcomes of the PV-PQ tran-
sitions are hard to predict, because they introduce the disconti-
nuities in the model. As the system moves closer to the stability
limit and VSI approaches unity, the PV-PQ transitions become
more dangerous. Therefore, it is necessary to monitor the system
reactive-power reserves and deploy protective/control actions if
the reserves are nearly exhausted and is below a certain
threshold.
The PV-PQ transition of generator can be estimated by mon-
itoring its reactive-power reserve , where the gen-
erator reactive-power output at a time instant is modeled as a
nonlinear function of time that fits a sliding window of data sam-
ples. For the sake of illustration, lets assume the linear model
and estimate the time instant at which the reactive-power of unit
will be exhausted as
where denotes the current time instant, while
represents the rate of change of reactive-power generated by
unit , which is calculated from two consecutive measurements.
Therefore, the occurrence of the next PV-PQ transition in the
system is estimated by
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER SYSTEMS, VOL. 18, NO.1, FEBRUARY 2003
Fig. 2. PMUs connected by the end-to-end SONET. Indices L and G refer to
load and generator buses.
(4) where represents a set of generator units operating in the
PV mode. The time remaining to the next PV-PQ transition rep-
resents the reactive-power reserve index RPRI
RPRI (7)
Everytime RPRI gets close to zero, a generator may reach
its reactive-power limit.
III. PROTECTION AND CONTROL SCHEME AGAINST
VOLTAGE COLLAPSE
The PMUs are placed at all load buses (denoted PMU )
and generator buses (denoted PMU buses). A PMU mea-
sures voltage and all incident current phasors in discrete time
intervals at the bus where it is installed, which enable: 1)
monitoring of the power injection at the bus; and 2) tracking of
the parameters of the voltage source and line modeling the rest
of the system as seen from the bus, at every time instant .
The existence of the high-speed Synchronous Optical Net-
work (SONET) among PMUs is assumed (see Fig. 2). SONET
allows each PMU to be provided with real-time information on
generator reactive-power margins and estimates when generator
reactive-power reserves will be exhausted. The line rate ranges
from 51.84 Mb/s to 9.953 Gb/s. Latency times of information
through the network are more than adequate for the proposed
application.
Parameters of each two-bus equivalent and , which
model the rest of the system as seen from load bus , are
continuously updated from a sliding window of voltage and
current phasor measurements.
The process of determining the voltage-stability margin at
load bus and the appropriate control actions can be summa-
(5) rized in the following steps.
Step 1) Perform local phasor voltage and current measure-
ments at .
Step 2) Calculate parameters of a two-bus equivalent
and .
Step 3) Determine the VSLBI value and translate it into a
time estimate (see Section IV).
Step 4) From the received information on reactive-power re-
serve of every generator, estimate the occurrence of
(6) a new PV-PQ transition .
MILOSEVIC AND BEGOVIC: PROTECTION AND CONTROL USING A NETWORK OF PHASOR MEASUREMENTS 123

Step 5) If the time left to voltage collapse is less than a

certain threshold and the PV-PQ transitions are ex-
pected, deploy the corrective control measures, such
as activation of available reactive-power reserves,
freezing of tap changers, etc. If these measures are
not effective, deploy emergency control actions,
such as load shedding at the particular load bus and
the buses in its vicinity. Otherwise, return to step 1.
For simplicity, from now on, we will drop the index of time
in all equations. However, we will keep in mind that the
system is constantly changing and that we analyze it at every
time instant .
Fig. 3. PV curve and load characteristics of a ZIP load consisting of 25% PQ
and 75% Z load for different loading factor k .
IV. VOLTAGE-STABILITY LIMIT FOR MIXED LOADS
As mentioned before, voltage collapse is largely affected by
TABLE I
the load characteristics. For illustration, the voltage stability of a CRITICAL PARAMETERS OF A TWO-BUS SYSTEM SHOWN IN FIG. 1
simple two-bus system in Fig. 1 with a ZIP static load model (a
mixture of constant impedance, constant current, and constant
power) is considered.

(8)

where , , , , , and are constants, and the value

is an independent demand variable called loading factor, which
is parameterized with time [i.e., ].
For the system shown in Fig. 1, a relationship between the
voltage magnitude at the load bus , the load active-power ,
and reactive load power is given as portion of the voltage-dependent load within the total load de-
termines the location of the voltage-stability limit point on the
(9) lower part of the system curve. When the load is purely
impedance/current load, then voltage instability cannot occur.
Equation (9) defines a surface in the ( ) space, whose
Note that the maximum power delivered to the load at
projection onto the ( ) plane gives a well known system
a given power factor is independent of the load type. Beyond
PV characteristic. The ZIP load characteristic (8) intersects the
the point of maximum transfer, the actual power delivered de-
system PV curve at two points (Fig. 3). These points represent
creases with an increase in load demand.
two real feasible solutions of a fourth-order algebraic equation
In an -bus system, the voltage-stability limit depends
with respect to obtained by including (8) in (9). The system
on the load characteristics and the available reactive-power
becomes voltage unstable when, for some critical loading ,
reserve. The only case in which the voltage instability cannot
the load characteristic (8) becomes tangent to system PV curve
occur is when all of the loads are of the impedance/current type
and the two solutions coalesce in a saddle-node bifurcation .
and the units have enough reactive-power reserves so that the
The critical loading factor and the time of its occurrence ,
PV-PQ transitions never occur. In all other cases, the system
can be easily computed numerically from (9) and then the corre-
has a voltage-stability limit.
sponding load voltage , active , and reactive
load demands.
Table I provides the critical loading factors , the critical A. Voltage-Stability Index for Voltage-Sensitive Loads
total active load demand , and the maximal power trans- As has been shown, when a part of the load is voltage depen-
ferred for the two-bus system in Fig. 1 for the different dent, the voltage-stability limit extends beyond the maximum
load types, assuming p.u., p.u., deliverable power. Hence, voltage-stability condition (1), de-
p.u. ( MVA, kV). The nominal rived for a two-bus system in Fig. 1, assuming a constant power
active and reactive load powers are equal to MW load, needs to be extended to a general case.
and MVAr, while the reference voltage is equal Since (1) holds for the two-bus equivalent with con-
to p.u.. The load factor is assumed constant at stant-power load, the idea is to reduce a two-bus system with
all times. The critical point lies on the nose of PV curve and a ZIP load to a system with constant-power load component
coincides with the system maximum power limit for a purely only, as shown in Fig. 4. Note, and .
constant power load (100% PQ). The critical operating point The impedance and constant current load components are
remains stable beyond the maximum power-transfer point for represented as impedance and current source , with
the loads with constant and voltage-dependent components. The parameters derived from a ZIP load model (8).
124 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER SYSTEMS, VOL. 18, NO.1, FEBRUARY 2003

Fig. 4. Equivalent of a simple two-bus system with the ZIP load. Fig. 6. VSI for the IEEE 39-bus system without reactive constraints.

Fig. 5. Upper portions of P -V curves obtained with the different types of Fig. 7. Load voltage V and voltage drop across the equivalent impedance
load in the two-bus system in Fig. 1. 1 V at bus 29 for the IEEE 39-bus system without reactive constraints.

The system equivalent, as seen by the constant-power load V. SIMULATION RESULTS

, has the following voltage phasor
and the complex line impedance : The proposed VSI and RPRI indicators were tested on a mod-
ified New England 39-bus power system. The loads were con-
sidered time and voltage dependent (8). Loading was simultane-
(10)
ously changed at all load buses by the same loading factor . For
simplicity, the loading factor was linearly increased with time
(11) . The increase in real power generation was proportional to the
increase in the active system load. Initially, the reactive-power
Replacing by and by , into (1), yields the voltage- generation has not been limited. Later, the 39-bus system with
stability condition for a two-bus system with mixed load types the same loading conditions was tested at limited reactive-power
production.
i.e., (12) Fig. 6 shows the VSI for the 39-bus system without con-
straints. As expected, the VSI curve is smooth and reaches unity
where represents the voltage drop across the equivalent value when the system experiences voltage instability. The most
impedance . Thus, the voltage-stability load-bus index critical bus in the system in all cases shown in Fig. 6, except
(VSLBI) for load-bus in a presence of mixed loads becomes for 100% constant power load, was bus number 29. The voltage
curve and the voltage drop curve are also smooth,
VSLBI (13) as shown in Fig. 7. They head toward each other and meet at the
point where voltage collapse occurs. This confirmed the validity
The voltage collapse point coincides with the point that lies on of (12).
the nose of the - curve (see Fig. 5). The critical loading For the IEEE 39-bus system with the limited reactive-power
, for which voltage instability occurs, can be estimated from resources, the results for the most critical bus number 23 are
(9), after replacing , , , and by , , , and shown in Figs. 810 The sharp jumps in VSI (see Fig. 8), in
, respectively. voltage nose-curves (see Fig. 9) and in estimated time margin
to voltage collapse (see Fig. 10) coincide with individual gener-
ators reaching their respective reactive limits.
(14) A check with the power-flow solver reveals that the system
loses voltage stability when the PV-PQ transition of generator
where ( ) denotes the current operating point. 34 occurs. The value of VSI, calculated at the operating point
MILOSEVIC AND BEGOVIC: PROTECTION AND CONTROL USING A NETWORK OF PHASOR MEASUREMENTS
Fig. 8. V SI for the IEEE 39-bus system with reactive-power limits enforced.
Fig. 9. Load voltage V and voltage drop across the equivalent impedance
1 V at bus number 23 for the IEEE 39-bus system with reactive constraints.
Fig. 10. Estimated time margin to voltage collapse t for bus 23 in the IEEE
39-bus system with reactive-power limits enforced.
that precedes voltage instability, increases above unity as the
voltage-dependent loads represent a greater potion of the total
system load when the system operates with the limited reac-
tive-power resources. This suggests that the voltage security as-
sessment and control should not rely solely on the VSI. Since
the critical points are transition points, the VSI needs to be com-
bined with the estimates of the unit PV-PQ transitions.
The rate at which the reactive-power reserve of unit is being
exhausted depends on the number of units already op-
erating at reactive-power limits and on the closeness of unit
to the critical buses. Fig. 11 illustrates for unit 37,
which stays in the PV mode at all times. Discontinuities in its
correspond to the PV-PQ transitions in the system.
When the system is close to the voltage-stability limit, the re-
active-power is being exhausted from unit 37 almost 10 times
125
Fig. 11. Rate of change of reactive-power generated by unit 37 in IEEE 39-bus
system with 75% P and 25% Z loads.
Fig. 12. Reactive-power reserve indicator (RPRI) for the IEEE 39-bus system
with 75% P and 25% Z load.
Fig. 13. Estimates of the time to voltage collapse for 23 and the next PV-PQ
=0
transition with respect to t in the IEEE 39-bus system with 75% PQ and
25% Z load.
faster than during the light loading conditions, when all gener-
ators in the system operate in the PV mode.
Fig. 12 shows RPRI for the 39-bus system with 75% PQ and
25% Z load. Between the initial loading and the critical
loading , the RPRI reached the value of zero six
times, indicating that six generator units reached their reactive-
power limits. These are generators 30, 32, 35, 36, 33, and 34.
The VSI smaller than a certain threshold, for example, VSI
and the RPRI close to zero, are predictors of voltage collapse.
These parameters represent a trigger for the control activation
at a certain bus.
Fig. 13 shows the estimate of the time margin to voltage col-
lapse for bus 23 from its time-varying two-bus equivalent and
the estimate of the minimum margin to the next PV-PQ transi-
tion , which is calculated as in (6). Note that both variables
126
are calculated with respect to the time instant . The PV-PQ
transitions occur every time when there is a stepup change in
and a stepdown change in . Two curves approach one another
and become dangerously close if the next estimated PV-PQ tran-
sition is a critical one. The dark circle illustrates a zone where
the protective and the control actions must be deployed to avoid
voltage collapse.
The control actions in the vicinity of the critical bus may be
1) activation of the available reactive-power reserves;
2) blocking of the tap changers;
3) voltage reduction at the feeders connected to the corre-
sponding and the neighboring buses
4) load shedding of the nearest consumers if the above mea-
sures do not prove to be effective.
VI. CONCLUSION
A novel concept for the detection of voltage instability and
the corresponding control in the presence of voltage-dependent
loads has been presented. The onset of the voltage collapse
point to current operating conditions is determined based on the
VSLBI indicator calculated from the local voltage and the cur-
rent phasors measurements and the system-wide information on
reactive-power reserves. The algorithm suggests control actions
to be deployed when the stability margin is small and the reac-
tive-power reserves are nearly exhausted. Namely, limitations in
reactive-power generation cause sudden changes in the VSLBI
and prevent the operator from acting in time. As illustrated in
the paper, this problem is more emphasized as voltage-depen-
dent loads represent a greater portion of the total load. For these
reasons, a decision on the triggering of protective/emergency
controls cannot be made by considering the VSLBI value only.
It needs to be revised by using the information on generator-re-
active reserves. The proposed concept for voltage-stability pro-
tection and control does not jeopardize the existing protection
systems. On the contrary, it is supposed to be added on top of
the existing control schemes to give them an extra quality.
APPENDIX
IDENTIFICATION OF THE SYSTEM EQUIVALENT PARAMETERS
The parameters of the system equivalent used for modeling
the rest of the system as seen from the local bus are not constant
(see Fig. 1), but vary slightly reflecting changes in the power
system operating conditions. Those parameters can identified
from a sliding window of discrete data samples by using a pa-
rameter identification algorithm, such as the least square algo-
rithm (LS) or the recursive least square (RLS) scheme with a
forgetting factor . The will give larger weight to recent
phasor measurements.
The relationship among unknown parameters of the equiva-
lent voltage source and as
well as the voltage phasor and current phasor
measured at the load bus, at a time instant ,
is given as
(15)
After separating the imaginary and real parts, (15) yields the
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER SYSTEMS, VOL. 18, NO.1, FEBRUARY 2003
system of two linear equations with four unknowns, which can
be written in the following form:
(16)
where
Having the stream of voltage and current phasor measure-
ments, the vector of unknowns can be determined by using
the RLS scheme
(17)
where is the identity matrix, while is a forgetting factor,
which assigns lower weight to the old measurements in the re-
cursive scheme.
Note that and can be identified only if there is a change
in the system state. However, if the system stays in the same op-
erating point, its steady state does not change and voltage col-
lapse cannot occur. As soon as there is a change of the system
state that can lead to deterioration of voltage stability, it is pos-
sible to determine the parameters of the system equivalent and
proceed with the decision regarding any protective action.
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MILOSEVIC AND BEGOVIC: PROTECTION AND CONTROL USING A NETWORK OF PHASOR MEASUREMENTS
Borka Milosevic (S98) received the B.Sc. degree
in electrical engineering from the University of Bel-
grade, Belgrade, Yugoslavia, in 1992 and the M.Sc.
degree in electrical engineering from Georgia Insti-
tute of Technology, Atlanta, in 1998. She is pursuing
the Ph.D. degree at Georgia Institute of Technology.
She was a Research Engineer at EE Institute
Nikola Tesla in Belgrade, from 1994 to 1997. Her
research interests include power system security
assessment and stability, application of multiagent
systems, and genetic algorithms to power systems
monitoring and control.
127
Miroslav Begovic (S87M89SM92) received
the B.Sc. and M.Sc. degrees in electrical engineering
from Belgrade University, Belgrade, Yugoslavia,
and the Ph.D. degree in electrical engineering from
Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University,
Blacksburg.
Currently, he is an Associate Professor in the
School of Electrical and Computer Engineering,
Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta. His
interests are in the areas of computer applications
in power system monitoring, protection and control,
and design and analysis of renewable energy sources.