PMU-based Distributed Non-iterative Algorithm for Real-time Voltage Stability Monitoring

Abstract: The Phasor measurement unit (PMU) measurements are mandatory to monitor the power system's voltage stability margin in an online manner. Monitoring is key to the secure operation of the grid. Traditionally, online monitoring of voltage stability using synchrophasors required a centralized communication architecture, which leads to high investment cost and cyber-security concerns. The increasing importance of cyber-security and low investment cost have recently led to the development of distributed algorithms for online monitoring of the grid that are inherently less prone to malicious attacks. In this work, a novel distributed non-iterative voltage stability index (VSI) is proposed by recasting the power flow equations as circles. The online computations of VSI are simultaneously performed by the processors embedded at each bus in the smart grid with the help of PMUs and communication of voltage phasors between neighboring buses. The distributed nature of the index enables the real-time identification of the critical bus of the system with minimal communication infrastructure. The effectiveness of the proposed distributed index is demonstrated on IEEE test systems and contrasted with existing methods to show the benefits of the proposed method in speed, interpretability, identification of outage location, and low sensitivity to noisy measurements.