Voltage Stability Assessment and Enhancement in Power Systems

Abstract

Voltage stability is a long standing issue in power systems and also is critical in the power system. This thesis aims to address the voltage stability problems. When wind generators reach maximum reactive power output, the bus voltage will operate near its steady-state stability limit. In order to avoid voltage instability, a dynamic L-index minimization approach is proposed by incorporating both wind generators and other reactive power resources. It then verifies the proposed voltage stability enhancement method using real data from load and wind generation in the IEEE 14 bus system.

Additionally, power system is not necessary to always operate at the most voltage stable point as it requires high control efforts. Thus, we propose a novel L-index sensitivity based control algorithm using full Phasor measurement unit measurements for voltage stability enhancement. The proposed method uses both outputs of wind generators and additional reactive power compensators as control variables. The L-index sensitivity with respect to control variables is introduced. Based on these sensitivities, the control algorithm can minimise all the control efforts, while satisfying the predetermined L-index value. Additionally, a subsection control scheme is applied where both normal condition and weak condition are taken into account. It consists of the proposed L-index sensitivities based control algorithm and an overall L-index minimisation method. Threshold selection for the subsection control scheme is discussed and extreme learning machine is introduced for status fast classification to choose the method which has less power cost on the transmission line.

Due to the high cost of PMUs, a voltage stability assessment method using partial Phasor measurement unit (PMU) measurements is proposed. Firstly, a new optimisation formulation is proposed that minimizes the number of PMUs considering the most sensitive buses. Then, extreme learning machine (ELM) is used for fast voltage estimation. In this way, the voltages at buses without PMUs can be rapidly obtained based on the PMUs measurements. Finally, voltage stability can be assessed by using L-index.