A Comparative Case Study of Online Voltage

Instability Monitoring
D. T. Duong and K. Uhlen

G. N. Taranto

S. Lvlund

Department of Electric Power

Engineering
Norwegian University of Science
and Technology
Trondheim, Norway

Department of Electrical Engineering

Federal University of Rio de
Janeiro/COPPE
Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

Statnett
Alta, Norway

AbstractOnline voltage instability monitoring based on

estimation of the Thevenin impedance has been thoroughly
studied in many works. This equivalent impedance can be
approximated either by phasor measurements of the load
voltage and current or by these measurements in combination
with system topology. Both approaches have their own
characteristics, which are closely examined in this paper. The
study is conducted by simulation of the Nordic power system,
where high power export on the transmission corridor between
southern Norway and Sweden might cause voltage stability
problems. Moreover, the proposed algorithms for estimation of
the Thevenin impedance is also implemented and tested at the
same location with real data from phasor measurement units.
This has enabled interesting comparison of the Thevenin
impedances obtained from simulations and the real power
system.
Index TermsMaximum power transfer, PMU, Thevenin
impedance, Voltage instability.

I.

INTRODUCTION

In complex power systems, online monitoring tools play

an important role in properly detecting the critical conditions
and giving early warnings to operators when the system is
close to its limits, including voltage instability. The online
indicator for voltage instability based on estimation of the
Thevenin impedance proposed in [1] is an elegant approach. It
is simple to implement and requires only local phasors from
phasor measurement unit (PMU). The essence of this method
is using consecutive phasor measurements to build an overdetermined set of equations and then obtain the best solution
by the least square method. However, in normal operation,
changes of the load voltage and current are quite small; they
are also distorted by transients in the grid, noise, and errors of
measurement instruments, etc. As a result, variations of local
voltage and current do not reflect the true response of the
system to the changes of the load. Using these local
measurements to find the Thevenin parameter by the least
square method, therefore, has certain drawbacks. Probably,
considerable disturbances are prerequisites to obtain good

performance. This is a main challenge for methods based on

local phasors.
Similarly, the method proposed by [2] also utilizes local
phasor measurements to compute the equivalence by recursive
estimation. Its performance has been well demonstrated in the
Italian transmission grid. There is also implementation of this
method [4] with real PMU data in the Brazilian power system,
showing strong possibility for online application in power
systems. Therefore, this approach is selected for the
comparative case study.
Recently, the authors [5] have proposed an alternative
method, which estimates the Thevenin impedance from
system topology and PMU measurements. The approach
requires only topology of the concerned area. This makes the
method viable for practical implementation. Since system
topology is utilized, estimated values are consistent and more
resistant to grid transient, noise and uncertainty of
measurements.
This paper examines the performances of the two methods
in [2] and [5] by simulation of the Norwegian transmission
system. The study areas are a 130kV sub-system in the north
and the 400kV grid in the south of Norway, where voltage
stability at the tie lines with high export to Sweden is
evaluated. The real PMU data collected in both normal
operation and disturbance conditions from this corridor is also
analyzed in the study, enabling comparison of estimated
values between simulation and real power system.
The paper is structured as follows: section II briefly
reviews indicators for online voltage instability monitoring,
followed by section III with new updates in the topologybased method. Then, section IV shortly summarizes the
method in [2], and section V presents the test cases. Finally,
conclusion is drawn in section VI.
II.

REVIEW OF ONLINE VOLTAGE STABILITY ASSESSMENT

BASED ON THEVENIN EQUIVALENCE

Consider a simple 2-bus system in Fig. 1, where the load is

supplied by a voltage source ETh behind the impedance ZTh. As

the load demand increases, load voltage drops accordingly.

After crossing the nose point, actual load power will
decrease despite rising demand (lower load impedance).
According to the maximum power transfer theorem, the load
reaches its maximum power when the two impedances are
equal, Z L ZTh .
VL

ZTh

IL

ETh

ZL

Figure 1. A simple two-bus system.

In power system, at a concerned load bus, the rest of the

system can be represented by a Thevenin voltage source and
an impedance similar to Fig. 1. Then, the ratio of the
magnitudes of the two impedances establishes an indicator,
the Impedance Stability Index (ISI) [6], for voltage stability
assessment,

ISI

ZTh
ZL

ZL2
5+j50 (W

#3

Line 1

#2
G2

Line 2
40MW+5MVAr

(1)

ETh2 ZTh imag ZTh sin real ZTh cos

, (2)
2
2 imag ZTh cos real ZTh sin

where is the the angle between VL and I L .

In summary, the essence of online voltage stability
assessment is to continuously estimate the Thevenin
impedance and the maximum power transfer and forms
indicators for the distance between the current operating point
and the limits.
III.

ZL1
9+j90 (W

#1
G1

The power margin of the current operating point can be

determined by comparing load power and the maximum
power transfer at the tip point, which is estimated as [7]

Smax

A. Thevenin impedance in power systems

In nonlinear systems like power systems, the Thevenin
theorem cannot be directly implemented to estimate the
Thevenin impedance. It is partly because generators are
different from ideal voltage sources. Consider the circuit
depicted in Fig. 2. First, assume that G1 and G2 are two
voltage sources. According to the Thevenin theorem, the
Thevenin impedance seen by the load is ZL1||ZL2. This
impedance is unchanged despite loading conditions. In power
system, this relation no longer holds true. Now, let us assume
that G1 is a large generator, which is able to meet all the
power demand from the grid. The generator has an AVR to
maintain its terminal voltage at nominal value during the
simulation. At bus #2, G2 is a generator, whose rated output is
100MVA. This generator is equipped with an AVR model
Norex2, which also includes over-excitation and armature
current limiter.

ESTIMATION OF THE THEVENIN IMPEDANCE BY SYSTEM

TOPOLOGY AND PMU MEASUREMENTS

This approach was formerly presented in [5]. It was

designed to be a tool for online voltage instability monitoring
in sub-transmission network, where voltage collapse is a risk
when the network is weakened during planned or forced
outages. Compared to the previous work, this paper is
extended, improved and modified by the following aspects:
The proposed algorithm is improved. It is no longer
limited to the sub-transmission network. It can be
applied in any networks that are vulnerable to voltage
instability.
Modeling reactive power injection from the generation
side by a reactance has been implemented. It improves
the result of the Thevenin impedance estimation.
Further analysis of estimation of the Thevenin
impedance in power system.

Figure 2. A simple system to analyze influence of power dispatch on the

Thevenin impedance.

To examine how the Thevenin impedance is affected by

dispatch of active power, the load is increased with constant
power factor until it goes beyond the maximum power transfer
limit; meanwhile, the output active power of G2 is unchanged
during the simulation. The simulation is repeated with
different active power (5MW, 10MW and 20MW) injected
into bus #2. Table I summarizes the peak power and the
corresponding load impedance. As stated in [4], the load
impedance at the instant of maximum power transfer is also
the Thevenin impedance seen at bus #3. That means the
Thevenin impedance varies from 75.85W to 67.34W, although
the network is unchanged. Besides, none of these Thevenin
impedances matches the equivalent impedance (32.3) of the
two parallel impedances, ZL1 and ZL2. This is contrary to the
Thevenin impedance obtained from circuit theory, where an
ideal independent voltage source is considered.
TABLE I.

PEAK POWER AND LOAD IMPEDANCE

Output active
power of G2

Peak power
(MVA)

Load impedance
(Ohm)

5
10
20

71.47
75.25
80.94

75.85
73.9
67.34

Based on this analysis, one can come to following

assessment:
Generator G1 functions as a voltage source. Therefore,
the limit on the power transferred from bus #1 to #3 is
imposed by impedance ZL1. This impedance should be
taken into account when estimating the Thevenin
impedance seen at bus #3.
The maximum power injected into bus #3 from bus #2 is
not restricted by ZL2, but by the rated output of the

The main idea of the proposed method is to model active

and reactive power injected to bus #3 from bus #2 by two
separate voltage sources behind the two modeling reactances
as shown in Fig. 3. Computation of XP and XQ is presented in
the following section.

G1

P23

jXP

Q23

jXQ

300

80

VP
Impedance (Ohm)

#1

#3
ZL1
9+j90 (W

be seen, the modeling method has shown good performance. It

is noted that the equivalent of ZL1||ZL2 is far below the load
impedance; it does not reflect the true Thevenin impedance
seen at bus #3 in the grid.

VQ

Line 1

Load Z
Thevenin Z
ZL1||ZL2
Load power

200

60

Power (MVA)

generator. Therefore, computing the Thevenin

impedance by ZL1||ZL2 is not an appropriate approach.

100

40

40MW+5MVAr
0

Figure 3. Modeling active and reactive power limits by two reactances.

B. Modeling power transfer by impedances

Consider a resistive load connected to an arbitrary node in
a grid as shown in Fig. 4. Assume that the voltage level Vn and
the available maximum active power Pmax, which the grid can
supply, are given. It is common practice to model the system
as a voltage source behind an impedance. For simplification, it
is reasonable, especially in transmission system, to assume
that the impedance is just a pure reactance XP. From Fig. 4, the
magnitude of load current can be computed as

Vn

(3)

R 2 X P2

At the maximum power transfer, R X P . Therefore, this

relation holds:

Xp

Vn2
2 Pmax

(4)
jXP

Pmax
Vn

Figure 4. Modeling active power transfer by a reactance.

Similarly, to represent the maximum reactive power

transfer Qmax by a reactance XQ, one can use the same
approach. However, through thorough studies of the impact of
this modeling method on the accuracy of the Thevenin
impedance estimation, the authors propose this equation to
compute XQ,

XQ

Vn2
Qmax

10

20

30

40

20
50

Time (s)

Figure 5. Estimation of Thevenin impedance during load projection

C. The scheme for online voltage instability monitoring

based on system topology and PMU measurements
Reference [5] has presented the basic ideas for online
voltage stability monitoring scheme, which is further
developed and presented in the flow chart in Fig. 6. This paper
focuses on some points to clarify the algorithm:
Determination of the boundary: the size of the study
area is confined by boundary nodes. They are buses
that have strong connection to the rest of the system.
The bus, where small generator (compared to the
loading condition in the study area) is connected to, is
also considered as a boundary node. PMUs need to be
installed at the boundary nodes. With this technique,
the size of the study area is reduced significantly,
paving the way for online implementation.
Simplification of the monitored subsystem: normally
the network is a meshed grid; there is no direct
connection between generators and the monitored load
bus. Therefore, the modeling technique in section III
cannot be applied. In the simplified grid, there are only
boundary buses and the monitored bus.

I
Pmax

Power
system

(5)

Applying the proposed modeling technique, the Thevenin

impedance is computed as the equivalent of ZL1, XP and XQ in
parallel. Fig. 5 shows the load impedance compared with the
Thevenin impedance during the load increase period. As can

Computation of modeling impedances and estimation

of the Thevenin impedance: Using PMU measurements
to calculate virtual power injection from each boundary
node into the monitored load bus. If the power is
flowing into the load bus, model it by the two
reactances computed by (4) and (5). If power flow is in
the opposite direction, consider it as a load and replace
by a load impedance. The Thevenin impedance is the
equivalent of all modeling impedances in parallel.
IV.

ESTIMATION OF THEVENIN IMPEDANCE FROM LOCAL

PMU MEASUREMENTS (THE CT METHOD)

The CT method is presented in [2] and further studied in

[3]. The estimation of the Thevenin reactance can be
summarized as follows:
Step 1: estimate initial value of ETh and compute XTh.

 Step 2: whenever new measurements are available,

check the conditions to identify whether ETh is larger or
smaller the actual one, then reduce or increase ETh
accordingly by a small correction. The magnitude of
this adjustment, which is determined by the factor k,
has decisive influence of the approachs performance.

initialization process and has no negative effect on the

performance in operation. During the load increase, both
methods exhibit smooth and stable approximation. The two
algorithms properly estimate the Thevenin impedance at the
peak power, where the three impedances are equal.

Step 3: Compute XTh. Repeat Step 2 when new

measurements of voltage and current phasors become
available.
#1

Determine boundary nodes

130kV

#2

PMU measurements from

generator, boundary and
monitored buses

Large
generators

Admittance matrix and loading

condition from SCADA EMS/
state estimator

Modify the admittance matrix.

Simplify the study grid.
Using PMU measurements to obtain
modeling impedances.
Compute the Thevenin impedance at
concerned buses.
Compute Smax and power margin.
Establish indicators.

Figure 7. Single line diagram of the 130kV study area.

ZTh - CT method
ZTh - topology-based
Load

25

Impedance (pu)

Update measurements, system topology and

loading condition

Main transmission
400kV system

20
15
10
5

Display indicators
Release early warning and take
mitigating actions

Figure 6. Online voltage stability monitoring scheme based on system

topology and PMU measurements.

V.

TEST CASES

A. Simulation on the Norwegian transmission system

1) Load increase in 130kV grid in the north of Norway
The study area is a 130kV sub-system depicted in Fig. 7,
which has been exposed to voltage collapse recently. The
area is highly loaded, fed by one 400/130kV substation
connected to bus #1 and a large power plant at bus #2. The
main constraint on voltage collapse is the weak grid, which
sets power limits on the transfer capacity. To validate the
proposed method, the weakest load in this area is projected to
voltage collapse. The simulation is run on the entire model of
the Norwegian system, but only the system topology of the
study area is taken into calculation. Bus #1 and #2 are treated
as large generation buses; it is because they have large
capacity to meet the demand during load increase. Besides,
loads are modeled as constant power type.
Fig. 8 shows the outcome of the two methods compared
with the load impedance. As can be seen, there is a small
difference between the two estimates. This can be explained
by the fact that in the 130kV grid, the X/R ratio of power lines
is smaller than the transmission network. Since the CT
method assumes that the Thevenin impedance is a pure
reactance, this mismatch is expected. This issue is thoroughly
examined in [4]. At the beginning, the CT method is
initialized and starts converging after 12s. This is a one time

10

15

20
25
Time (s)

30

35

40

45

Figure 8. Thevenin impedance estimation during load increase in 130kV

sub-system in the northern part of Norway.

The estimation of maximum power transfer is proposed in

[7], from which the authors use the Thevenin impedance
obtained by the CT method to estimate the maximum
loadability. Here, the maximum power transfer is computed
by equation (2) based on the Thevenin impedance estimated
by the two methods, together with the current and voltage of
the load. The result is shown in Fig. 9. By comparing Fig. 8
and 9, it is seen that a small mismatch in magnitude of the
Thevenin impedance can lead to large deviation in the
estimate of maximum power transfer. The estimated
maximum power at the current operating point is very
sensitive to the accuracy of the estimated Thevenin
impedance. Therefore, of the two indicators mentioned in
section II (ISI and Smax), the impedance indicator ISI is
preferred. Nonetheless, the estimated maximum loadability
using the topology-based method provides reliable
information about power margin.
2) The Thevenin impedance at the 400kV corridor
a) SIMULATION RESULTS
The transmission corridor between the southern part of
Norway and Sweden (the Hasle corridor) is often heavily
loaded by high export from the Norwegian grid as can be seen
in Fig. 10. The maximum power currently transferred on this
corridor is about 2500MW. This area is characterized by large
generation in the west, but load area and the corridor are
located in the eastern part. The 400kV grid is the main
network, transferring power from the generation and the loads.

expose its ultimate capacity, which is reflected by the

Thevenin impedance and the load current and voltage. Using
these current parameters cannot estimate the final limit.

0.11
0.1

Power (pu)

0.09
0.08
0.07
0.06
Smax - CT method
Smax - topology-based
Load

0.05
0.04

10

15

20

25
30
Time (s)

35

40

45

50

As the load is approaching the limit, the system strength is

unveiled because generators and other devices reach their
limits; power dispatch among generators also changes. All
these factors affect the value of the Thevenin impedance and
especially the voltage and the current of the load. Under this
condition, estimation of the maximum power transfer is now
able to approximate power limit properly. It is also noted that
the power margin is a good indicator; this gap is contracting
during the load increase until there is no power margin left
when the load has reached power limit.

Figure 9. Load power and estimated maximum power transfer.

Norway

Sweden

Hasle

Impedance (Ohm)

80

Load
ZTh
XTh

60
40
20
0

50

100

150

200
250
Time (s)

300

350

400

Figure 11. Measured and estimated impedance during load increase. ZTh
(blue curve) is the magnitude of the Thevenin impedance obtained by the
Topology-based method, and XTh (red) is the impedance obtained by the
measurement-based CT method.
4500

Apparent power (MVA)

Besides, there is the 300kV network, which also feeds power

into the 400kV grid. In the load area, there are some static
VAr compensators and synchronous condensers to maintain
voltage quality and increase transfer capacity of the grid. The
dynamic simulation is conducted using the full Norwegian
model built in PSS/E; the objective is to find the maximum
transfer at the Hasle corridor by increasing export power to the
Sweden side, which is simply considered as a load in the
simulation. In order to estimate the Thevenin impedance, the
topology-based method takes into account only system
topology of the 400kV in this area; buses that have connection
with the 300kV are considered as boundary nodes. There are
two buses treated as large generation bus; other generation
nodes are treated as the boundary nodes, which require PMU
installation to measure phasors of the bus voltage. The CT
method takes only local phasors of the voltage and current at
the 400kV node at Hasle substation.

Load
4000

Smax1

3500
3000
2500
2000

50

100

150

200
250
Time (s)

300

350

400

Figure 12. Estimation of maximum power transfer during load increase.

b) RESULT FROM REAL PMU DATA

IN NORMAL OPERATION CONDITION

Figure 10. The corridor between the southern part of Norway and Sweden.

Fig. 11 depicts the Thevenin impedance obtained from the

two methods. After initialization, the CT method converges to
the value around 29W until the load reaches the peak power.
The result from the topology-based approach starts at 25W and
slightly drops down 22W at the maximum power transfer
condition. The difference between the two estimated Thevenin
impedances is about 7W. Nevertheless, when the approaching
the maximum loadability at t = 380s, both methods properly
detect the critical condition of voltage instability.
Fig. 12 shows the load power and the estimated maximum
loadability produced by the topology-based approach. First,
the power estimate is 3000MW; but it gradually increases and
matches the peak load power at 4200MW. It can be explained
as when the load is not close to the limit, the system does not

At the Hasle substation, there is a PMU to measure the

currents and voltage at the 400kV bus. The currents of the
two tie lines are summed up and considered as the load
current. Based on these measurements, the CT method is
implemented to estimate the Thevenin impedance of the
Norwegian system seen at this bus. The observation duration
is about 17 minutes. During this time, load power slightly
changes from 2040MVA to 2200MVA; the Thevenin
impedance from the CT method, as depicted in Fig. 13, varies
from 35W to 67W. Meanwhile, the topology-based compute
the Thevenin impedance from the PSS/E model with similar
operating condition. The outcome of this method is 30W.
With real PMU data, the difference of the two methods is in
the range of 5W to 37W. Compared to Fig. 11, the difference
of the Thevenin impedance obtained from the CT method
between simulation and real data is also from 5W to 37W.
Unless there is a real voltage collapse incident, which is not
expected in this part of the power system, there is no tool so

Impedance (Ohm)

100

As can be seen from Fig. 14, the Thevenin impedance

obtained from the CT method has larger variation than the one
in normal operation condition. There is not large difference in
Thevenin impedance between the periods the line is in and out
of service.
Power transferred on the corridor (MVA)

far to validate the true Thevenin impedance at this node. But

at least all the estimated Thevenin impedances are smaller
than the load. Hence, it can be concluded that the system is
within the limit; in fact, it is.

80
Load
ZTh - CT method
ZTh - topology-based

60
40
20

100

200

300

400

500
600
Time (s)

700

800

900

1000

Figure 13. Thevenin impedance when the export is about 2000MW.

IN DISTURBANCE CONDITION

Impedance (Ohm)

200

ZTh - topology-base
Load
ZTh - CT method

150

6000

7000

8000

[3]

Voltage (kV)

430

[4]

420

[5]

410

[6]
400

390

[7]
0

1000

2000

3000

4000
5000
Time (s)

1000
800

1000

2000

3000

4000
5000
Time (s)

6000

7000

8000

6000

7000

8000

Figure 15. Voltage at 400kV busbar at Hasle substation during the

disturbance period.

CONCLUSION

REFERENCES

Figure 14. Thevenin impedance under the disturbance condition.

380

1200

At a certain operation condition, the methods based on

local measurements are able to detect fairly well the grids
temporal characteristics, but cannot fully identify the absolute
limits unless the system is in the vicinity of voltage instability.

[2]

4000
5000
Time (s)

1400

The Thevenin impedance estimated from the real PMU

measurements is a slightly higher than that obtained from the
simulation. The differences are probably due to modeling
imperfections and the fact that real power system dynamics is
more complex than the simulation model.

50

3000

1600

VI.

100

2000

1800

The two algorithms are, through simulation, able to

estimate properly the Thevenin impedance at maximum power
transfer instant. Since the CT method assumes the Thevenin
impedance is a reactance, estimation of maximum power
transfer using equation (2) is not very accurate.

[1]

1000

2000

Figure 16. Power transferred on the corridor during the disturbance period.

This case analyzes the Thevenin impedance when the

system goes through disturbance period.
Before the
disturbance, similar to previous figures, the Thevenin
impedance from the CT method shown in Fig. 14 is larger
than the one from the topology-based. At t = 2140s, there is a
short circuit in the Norwegian 400kV network as noticed by
the voltage drop in Fig. 15. The fault leads to the outage of
one of the lines connected to Hasle substation. Consequently,
export power drops from 2100MVA down to 1000MVA as
seen in Fig. 16. As a result, voltage rises due to overcompensation and after that a series of corrective actions is
taken to keep the voltage within the limit. At t = 4250s, the
tripped line is reclosed and export power gradually comes
back to initial value.

2200

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