A steady-state stability analysis of uniform synchronous power grid topologies

Abstract: Motter et al. derived a real-valued master stability function which determines whether and to what degree a given power grid is asymptotically stable. Stright and Edrington adopted certain uniformity assumptions on a grid's components and demonstrated how differences in topologies obtained using these components can affect the stabilities of the resulting grids. Building on this work, we show via simulations the physical significance of stability as opposed to instability. We show that for stable topologies, increased stability can correspond to decreased generator torque ripple. We also describe how some elementary changes in grid topology can affect stability values. Known stability values for certain abstract circulant grids are used to quantify stability enhancement as interconnection density increases.