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Decision Tree-Based Online Power System


Static and Dynamic Security Assessment Tool
Using PMU Measurements
B. C. Bernardes, W. D. Oliveira, J. P. A. Vieira, Member, IEEE, I. Ohana and U. H. Bezerra

AbstractThe static and dynamic power system security


evaluation, considering all possible contingencies, is yet a big
challenge mainly due to the huge computational effort that is
involved. In this article it is proposed the development of a real
time power system security assessment tool based on a decision
tree structure (DT) which is adequate to both evaluate static and
dynamic post-contingency power system security. The proposed
approach includes indications to voltage magnitude violation
(VMV), (TLV) thermal limit violation, static voltage stability
(SVS) and transient stability (TS). The proposed methodology
compiles in a single database data attributes which are acquired
in real time in a synchronized manner by the Phasor
Measurement Units (PMUs) so that these attributes are tested by
the DT to evaluate the power system security. The proposed
method was tested with the New England power system with 39
buses and 10 synchronous generators. The DT was trained off
line and a data set representing not trained conditions was
submitted to the DT which presented an excellent performance in
assessing the power system security.
Index TermsDecision tree, on-line security assessment, static
and dynamic security, transient stability, PMU measurements.

I. INTRODUCTION

oday modern power systems tends to operate with smaller


security margins,
and the occurrence of critical
contingencies may lead the system to violate some operational
limits, and even to face a critical stability situation. A severe
contingency may cause big impacts in the power system which
severity the system may not withstand. Nowadays the most
practical way to evaluate the different problems related to the
power system security is by the use of commercial computer
simulation tools which may represent adequately the power
system components models, but are not adequate for real time
application. The development of methods for real time power
system security assessment is still a big challenge due to the
high non-linearity and high dimensionality of the problems
involving real power systems. In fact, the data dimensionality
makes it impossible to verify the impacts of all probable

B. C. Bernardes, W. D. Oliveira, J. P. A. Vieira and I. Ohana are with the


Faculty of Electrical Engineering, Federal University of Par, Tucuru, PA,
Brazil (e-mail: jpavieira@ufpa.br, iohana@ufpa.br).
U. H. Bezerra is with the Faculty of Electrical Engineering, Federal
University of Par, Belm, PA, Brazil (e-mail: bira@ufpa.br).

contingencies and the combination among them in a


reasonable time span for practical application. Traditionally
the contingency evaluation is accomplished taking into
consideration only a small pre-selected set of the most
probable and severe contingencies which processing time may
take some minutes.
In a real time operation environment it is important to make
available information to the system operator about the system
global security margins so that preventive and/or corrective
actions may be decided with sufficient time to avoid the
system entering dangerous operational conditions as those that
resulted in big blackouts in Brazils interconnected power
system on the November 10th 2009 and February 10th, 2010
[1]. This way the development of monitoring tools to precisely
evaluate security problems and give prompt indication about
the system response with respect to the impacts of critical
contingencies is a very important feature that must be
incorporated in the modern supervision centers.
The use of intelligent techniques as artificial neural
networks (ANN), decision tree (DT), support vector machines,
among others, may successfully be used to reach this objective
[2]. These techniques make use of exhaustive off-line
simulation studies to extract inherent attributes about the
power system operation characteristics which can provide a
fast on-line prediction mechanism to enhance the power
system security based exclusively on on-line measurements.
Comparing to other intelligent techniques, the decision tree
technique exhibits an important characteristic that is to use
directly the attributes to reach established objectives. The
attributes not only help to build the prediction model but also
generate on-line monograms that are very useful in helping the
system operator to make decisions.
The use of decision trees in power system application took
place by the end of the 1980 decade [3]. Several other
applications were reported from that moment on, involving the
development of methodologies to evaluate power system
security issues. In [4], DTs were trained to predict the fault
critical clearing time in order to assess power system transient
stability problems. A real time method to predict transient
stability was proposed in [5], using a database that included
the post-contingency rotor angles as attributes. Other
applications involving the use decision trees have also been
reported to monitoring and estimating voltage security, loss of

synchronism detection, and controlled islanding strategies to


prevent the occurrence of cascading events [6]-[10]. In [11],
an on-line method to evaluate power system stability problems
using DTs and phasor measurement units (PMUs) was
described to analyze the dynamic security using attributes that
were measured by the PMU technique. In [12], another method
also based on DTs was proposed to evaluate voltage stability
problems caused by contingencies occurring on stressed
operational conditions, and PMU measurements were used as
attributes for the voltage stability evaluation. In [13], was
presented a project of an on-line security evaluation tool which
is constituted of four DTs that were created by four databases
to separately evaluate important static and dynamic security
aspects using PMU measurements.
This paper presents the development of an on-line
evaluation tool for the assessment of power system static and
dynamic security issues related to the specific problems of
detecting voltage magnitude violation (VMV), thermal limits
violation (TLV), static voltage stability (SVS) and transient
stability (TS), which makes use of a single DT trained by
exhaustive simulation studies and a set of on-line PMU
measurements as the attributes to be classified by the DT.
The principal procedures of the proposed evaluation tool
include: 1) execution of exhaustive simulation studies in order
to label the four referred security problems for a set of
operation conditions using all the N-1 possible contingencies
and a pre-selected list of most probable N-2 contingencies; 2)
Using this simulation data set, a single DT is trained to learn
the attributes that are extracted from the parameters that
characterize the system dynamics and operation state. 3) In the
real time application the on-line PMU measurements are
presented to the trained DT to classify the real time power
system security. The system will be classified as safe or
unsafe. In the case the system is unsafe the DT also classifies
the security specific problem that is occurring.
The proposed tool was tested in the New England power
system with a representative set of operational conditions. The
results so obtained have demonstrated that using the proposed
methodology it was possible to obtain a single DT that
presented high precision in the classification process with
good robustness.
II. DECISION TREE
The decision tree technique is an effective supervised data
mining tool to solve data classification problems with high
dimensionality. For a database consisting of different case
studies which are represented by an attribute vector, and a
specific objective, a DT may be projected in order to classify
this objective. In general, the most effective data attribute is
chosen as the first node of the tree and their limit values are
used to create the successive nodes. This procedure is carried
out in all created nodes until de leaf nodes have only one class.
After the tree was created a cutting process is carried to take
off the unnecessary nodes and to diminish the final DT size.

A typical decision tree structure is shown in Fig. 1 whose


rectangles with rounded corners represent the tree nodes,
where the tests on the data attributes are accomplished. Each
node presents two connections to other nodes or leaves; and
the limit value to be tested is presented on the connection line.
Rectangles with perpendicular corners are the tree leaves, or
classes. This tree example was constructed from a data set
having as attributes age, income, and the item that is bought by
a specific customer. This way, if the attribute age assumes the
value old then the item bought by the customer is personal
computer (PC), or if the attribute age assumes the value new
and the attribute income is high then the item bought is
notebook (NB).

Fig. 1. DT Sample

During the test stage another data set different from the
training set is used to test the DT. The final obtained DT must
be adequate to correctly classify the data registers and evaluate
future data. In designing a DT the registers must be divided
and many metrics are available to accomplish this division.
The RAPIDMINER program, version 4.0, that is used in this
paper, has four metrics to divide the registers, namely: Gain
Rate; Information Gain; Index Gini, and Precision [14]. The
performance evaluation of a DT is measured by counting the
test registers that were predicted correctly and those predicted
incorrectly using a table that is known as confusion matrix.
III. PMU PRINCIPLES
Monitoring the power system operation state is a relevant
aspect to the real time operation and decision making process.
Traditionally, power system operation state has been
monitored using measuring transformers (current and voltage
transformers) and the measurements are acquired and
processed by the supervisory control and data acquisition
system (SCADA) to help engineers to plan and operate the
electrical system. The SCADA system is a very useful tool to
supervise the power system operation state, but it presents a
poor ability for globally observation of the power system
because the acquired data in different parts of the system are
not synchronized in time.

Some recent tools as Synchronized Phasor Measurement


System (SPMS) that uses recent advances in communication,
computers, and in the technology for GPS (Global Positioning
System) are seen as promising technologies for monitoring
large power systems [15].
The SPMS is based on the intensive use of PMU
measurement technology, which makes use of the effective
synchronization procedure of the GPS. This way PMU makes
possible to obtain synchronized phasor measurements from
geographically different parts of the electrical system, with
sampling rates that are superior to those of the traditional
SCADA systems and also having an adequate angular
precision to most of the monitoring applications. PMU
presents potential application also in industry and may
contribute to the improvement of the power system stability
assessment application. But, PMU is yet an incipient
technology and some additional investigation must be
conducted to consolidate its spread usage.

Where

M i and M t indicate mass of the ith generator and

total mass of the power system, and


generator. Where

i is rotor angle of the ith

H i is generator i inertia constant in seconds.

This way, the dynamic performance index is calculated by


the absolute difference between the generator internal angle
and the system center of mass angle,
this case whether

i,COI

i ,COI = i COI

. In

exceeds the maximum value of 120

in the last integration step, the power system is considered


unsafe with respect to the angular transient stability.

IV. PROPOSED METHOD


The flowchart presented in Fig. 2 describes the proposed
methodology to the on-line evaluation of power system static
and dynamic security using a decision tree.
A. Database for Training the DT
1) Attributes Objectives
The post contingency analysis of the VMV, TLV and SVS
problems are carried out by means of a computer program for
static analysis, using a load flow routine to evaluate the
behavior of the system. The occurrence of a specific
contingency as for example, disconnection of one or more
transmission lines, loss of generation, and so on, a load flow
analysis is executed in order to define a safe or unsafe attribute
objective with respect to the problems of VMV and TLV. If
the power flow algorithm does not converge then the attribute
objective may be declared as a SVS problem. To effectively
quantify the impacts of the N-1 and N-2 contingencies on the
power system, some limits and indicators must be established
with respect to the VMV, TLV, SVS, and TS problems.
If the voltage magnitude at any bus violates the lower limit
of 0.95 p.u. and the upper limit of 1.05 p.u., then the voltage
magnitude is considered unsafe. If the MVA flow at any
component of the electrical network exceeds its specified
nominal value for the thermal limit then it is defined as a TLV
problem. The TS problem is based on the dynamic
performance index which is calculated for the system center of
mass angle

COI =

COI
1
Mt

NG

Mt =
i =1

as [16]:
NG

M
i

(1)

i =1

2H i
2f

(2)

Fig. 2. Flowchart of the methodology

2) Selection Attributes
Once the main objective of the proposed methodology is to
evaluate if a contingency may cause any static or dynamic
security problem for a specific operational condition, the
attributes may contain sufficient information to cope with the
real time system behavior as submitted to the contingency.
The first attribute type used in the created database is
related to variables that describe the system pre-disturbance
behavior, which are directly measured by the PMU. These
variables include nodal voltages (magnitudes and angles),
active and reactive power flows in the network. The second
attribute type is related to the generator active power, once the

active generation capacity limit may be an important indicator


to determine the system security. Besides this aspect, the
knowledge of the generators active powers may be useful in
establishing preventive control actions that may influence in
security margins. Other attribute types as N-1 and N-2
contingencies are not taken into consideration, once these
contingencies are intrinsically related to the former attributes
that are measured by the PMU.
V. CONCLUSIONS
It was proposed in this article the development of an on-line
evaluation tool to perform power system static and dynamic
security assessment based on decision trees and PMU
measurements. The power system security assessment was
focused on four main problems, namely the VMV, TLV, SVS,
and TS. Exhaustive simulation studies were accomplished to
precisely label the four cited security problems considering a
set of operational conditions that includes N-1 and N-2
contingencies. The DT was trained using a single database
containing data that include the four treated security problems,
which attributes come from the PMU measurements. The
developed tool was tested on the New England electrical
system and the results obtained so far has demonstrated that
the proposed methodology was able to build a robust and
highly precision DT to cope with power system static and
dynamic security problems.
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