APPLICATION OF ANN

TO LOW FREQUENCY OSCILLATIONS DETECTION

IN IRAQI NATIONAL POWER SYSTEM

Ibrahim I. H. HAMARASH (PhD)

University o Salahaddin-Hawler
Erbil, Kurdistan, Iraq
ibrahim_hamarash@gaugamela.net

Abstract: In Electrical Energy Industry, rising costs due to inflation and increased
environmental concerns has made power systems to be operated closer to design limits. Hence
power system small signal stability is emerging as major problem in the day-to-day operation
of stressed power systems. For secure operation and control of power systems under normal
conditions, it is essential to provide real time solutions to the operator I Energy Control Centre
(ECC). This paper presents the application of Artificial Neural Network to the detection of
low frequency oscillations in the Iraqi national power system. In this study, the Iraqi power
system has been divided into nine areas based on the geographical generation distribution and
the low frequency oscillations experienced during the steady state operation. Using off-line
data, observation regions for the stability modes have been selected, sampled, and activated,
and then these activations are assigned as inputs and outputs of the ANN trainings for finding
positions of the true eignvalues. Copyright © 2002 USTARTH

Keywords: Control, Power Systems, Stability, ANN

1. INTRODUCTION During the history of power industry, many methods have

As power systems grow in their size, their complexity
increase. At any moment, thousands of dynamic
components and hundreds of control elements interact
simultaneously and change continuously to make instants
which are referred to as operating conditions. But, not all
the operating conditions are safe and some instants are
risk which requires introducing preventing actions. Low
frequency oscillation is one of these instants that require a
fast and on-line prediction and correction. It arises when
a generator, or a group of generators, in power system are
subjected to small and gradual changes which lead to
unbalance between mechanical input and electrical output
powers of the generator. Mathematically, it depends on
the locations of the eignvalues of the system matrix on the
complex-plane.
For the power system to operate without uncontrolled low
frequency oscillations, which means to operate small
signal stable, the dispatcher engineer and the centralized
computer in control centers have to have accurate
eignstructure prediction in duration less than the required
time for the system to reach instable states.
been introduced and applied for prediction of low
frequency oscillations, but most of them are off-line and
on-line methods are still an open research field (Van Ness
and Brasch,1980; Wang and Semlyen,1990; Rouco and
Ignacio,1992;Leonardo, et. al.1995). The speed of
prediction and accuracy are the factors that restrict the on-
line operation. To overcome these difficulties, researches
are undergoing to apply genetic algorithms and artificial
neural network (ANN) techniques (Niebur, et.al.1993; Jin
and Gupta,1993; IEEE PSS,1996; Teeuwsen, et.al.,2001).
By using ANN, a fast assessment of low frequency
oscillation is possible regarding the complex
eigenstructure determination of large scale power
systems.
An ANN is a massively parallel information-processing
system. It can perform nonlinear computations in a short
duration. The major applications of ANN in power
systems are in the areas where pattern classification is
necessary based on historical examples. Once trained the
neural network is able to provide sufficiently accurate
recommendations in a very short time suitable for on-line
applications in ECC.
Hence the aim of this paper is to show how the problem
of detecting low frequency oscillations in the Iraqi
national electrical power system can be efficiently solved
by a neural network technique. In the next sections, the
computational procedure of the ANN based low
frequency oscillation prediction is discussed, then, the
procedure is applied to the Iraqi national power system in
section 3. Finally, the most significant conclusions are
driven.
2. THE ANN-BASED SMALL SIGNAL STABILITY
ALGORITHM
Artificial Neural Network is basically a model structure
and algorithm for fitting the model to some given
data(Jan,1998). The given data is considered as training in
the ANN structure. To generate the training data in this
study, poor damped eigenvalues are calculated for a
variety of operating conditions from a pre-defined
linearized mathematical model of the power system under
study, then, an observation area is defined within the poor
damped eigenvalues spaces. Starting with this inaccurate
off-line assessment, an on-line prediction is followed for
the non-linear real system using a learning process.
The ANN algorithm used in detecting low frequency
oscillations in electrical power systems is summarized in
the following steps:
Step 1.To generate the training data for the NN, an
observation area is defined within the complex
eigenvalue space. This observation area is located
at a low damping level and frequencies where
inter-area eigenvalues typically occur for a mean
value of a significant off line predictions under
various operating conditions. Other choices for the
selection of observation spaces are available
(Teeuwsen, Erlich, & El-Sharkawi, 2002).
Step 2. The observation area is sampled along the
negative real axis with a constant step width.
Step 3.The distances between the sample points and the
eigenvalues are computed using the following
formula:
( σ -kσ ) + ( K )
s f -f
eig
2 s eig 2
d= (1)
1 2

Several studies have founded that a three-layered neural

networks with one hidden layer can approximate any non- K1 and k2 are two scaling factors due to non-
linear function to any desired accuracy (Jan,1998). The
compatibility between units of σ and f.
architecture of three layers ANN is shown in figure1.It
consists of an input layer, an output layer and one hidden It is an axiom that the maximum distance possible
layer. between an eigenvalue and the closest sample point
occurs when the eigenvalue is located exactly in
the geometrical center of 4 neighboring sample
input hidden layer output points, or,

∆σ / 2 ∆f/2
) +( )
2 2
dmax= ( k1 K2
(2)

Step 4. Based on the maximum distance, the activation

value α for a sample is defined as a linear
function depending on the distance between a
sample point and an eigenvalue:

d
1-0.5 0≤ d ≤ 2 dmax
α= dmax (3)
0 d> 2 dmax

This activation α is computed for a given sample

point with respect to all eigenvalues resulting from
one pattern.
Fig.1 Typical three layer NN architecture
 The final activation value αtsum for the given
sample point is the summation of all activations a,
n for selecting the observation area. The observation areas
αtsum = Σ α (4)
i=1
whereby n is the number of considered eigenvalues. The
maximum distance (eqn.2) and the activation function
(eqn.3) lead to the minimum activation for a sample point
when an eigenvalue is nearby (Teeuwsen, Fischer, Erlich,
& El-Sharkawi, 2001).
The success of the prediction via this algorithm depends
strongly on the choice of the scaling parameters. These
parameters impact both the training process of the ANN
and the accuracy of the predicted region as well.
3. RESULTS OF THE INVESTIGATED SYSTEM
Iraqi national power system (400 kV) investigated in this
study comprises 19 bus-bars, 26 transmission lines and 9
generating stations. They are of different kinds of
generating units, thermal non-reheat, thermal singe-
reheat, and hydro turbine units. The 400 kV power
infrastructure map is shown in figure 2.
400 kV transmission system
Thermal power station
Hydro power station
Fig.2 Iraqi 400kV infrastructure map
The generators are described by 7th order model
(Hamarash, 2004). The system has been divided into 9
areas based on the geographical generation distribution
and the low frequency oscillations experienced during the
steady state operation (Hamarash, 2004). MATLAB is
used to determine the initial guess of oscillations, which
is referred to as mode shapes. Load flow calculation
results are used to evaluate possible mode shapes for a
variety of operating conditions. The mode shapes for 150
different operating conditions using load flow
calculations are shown in figure 3. These shapes are used
are selected according to the unstable and poor damped
shapes. For the system under study, the eignvalues1,2,3,4,
and 5 are showing unstable modes for some operating
conditions and eignvalue 6 is a poor damped shape, then
two observation areas are selected.
Eignvalue 1
Eignvalue 2
Eignvalue 3
Eignvalue 4
Eignvalue 5
Eignvalue 9
Eignvalue 6
Eignvalue 7
Eignvalue 8
Fig.3 Mode shapes for 150 different operating
conditions
Observation area 1
Observation area 2
Fig.4 Two observations areas
The observation areas are sampled along the negative real
axis with a constant 0.25 step width as shown in figure 5,
then according to step-III of the algorithm, each sample is
activated. The activation values are used to make a
decision for being closer or not to the true modes. The
training was carried out with a subset of training data,
whereas a smaller part of the data was kept back for
testing. Once the NN are trained properly, the NN output
values representing the activation of the sampling points,
need to be transformed into eigenvalue locations. Thus,
the predicted region in the complex eigenvalue space can
be determined. Two cases for such a prediction is shown
in figure 6. The oscillatory shapes are part of the shape
map of the 150 scenarios, which are satisfying the
condition.
Fig.5 Sampling of the complex-plane
Fig.6 Real positions of stability shapes
4. CONCUSIONS
The paper presented the application of neural network
technique to solve the problem of fast detection of low
frequency oscillations in the Iraqi 400 kV power system.
Results show that the eignvalues are approximated with
good accuracy and stability of the system can be
accurately predicted. One of the key advantages of this
new technique results from the fact that only a few
selected system features are necessary for eigenvalue
prediction. Comparison with other methods shows that
the ANN method is not affected by the structure of the
system matrix, and special sparsety structure is not
required. The NN based eigenvalue prediction is very fast
and, therefore, is applicable for on-line dynamic stability
assessment.
The neural work application in power system analysis is
an open research area, and further works can be done in
this field. All feature prediction is one of the most
interested and necessary topic has to be done so the study
covers an exact real system dynamics.
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