An alternative method for voltage stability assessment in power system

Abstract

Voltage stability assessment in power system has recently been a growing concern to power system utilities due to blackout experienced in a couple of years in some developed and underdeveloped nations. This paper presents an alternative method which is based on the topology of the power network to identify weak load buses that are susceptible to voltage instability. The method makes use of the critical mode and the eigenvectors to determine the weak bus of the system. To determine the critical mode of the system, eigenvalue decomposition technique is used. Comparison analysis with the power flow based voltage collapse proximity index (VCPI) is performed to show the significance of the suggested approach. Results obtained show that voltage stability assessment in power system could as well be done using the structurally based approach as it saves time and reduces the computational burden compared with the traditional power flow based approach of VCPI.