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Power system stability using decentralized under frequency and voltage load
Shedding

Article · July 2014

DOI: 10.1109/PESGM.2014.6939306

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 Power System Stability Using Decentralized Under
Frequency and Voltage Load Shedding
Bakhtyar Hoseinzadeh Filipe Faria Da Silva
Aalborg University, Denmark Aalborg University, Denmark
Email: bho@et.aau.dk Email: ffs@et.aau.dk
Abstract—Load shedding (LS) is the last emergency control
action against voltage or frequency instability or even system
blackout. Conventional LS relays, often rely on only frequency
data and due to equality of the frequency throughout the
entire power system, there is the possibility of coincidence
operation of relays and perhaps over load shedding. Besides, the
LS locations are already determined regardless of disturbance
location and may not be adaptive to the event scale and place.
This paper addresses the decentralized coordination of Under
Frequency Load Shedding (UFLS) and Under Voltage Load
Shedding (UVLS) schemes in the LS relays instead of independent
methods. The independent and constant frequency and voltage
stage thresholds are merged to achieve a united and new elliptical
thresholds. Since in addition to frequency, the voltage drop
information is also employed in the new method, the load
curtailment is started from the vicinity of failure point and
radially propagates in the network until not only the frequency
collapse is completely prevented, but also the frequency settles
down in the permissible range. Numerical simulations which
are carried out in DigSilent PowerFactory software confirm the
efficiency of proposed methodology to stabilize the power system
after a severe contingency.
Decentralized adaptive under frequency load shedding, un-
der voltage load shedding.
I. I NTRODUCTION
There are new design and security issues that should be
considered in an UVLS scheme and merely relying on UFLS
methods and issuing a relevant control action can not be a
remedial countermeasure for a wide range of disturbances
especially disturbances with under voltage initiating events,
since they may not be an appropriate countermeasure for
voltage collapse situations [1].
Serious frequency plunges can happen within a few seconds
and manual or operator/SCADA (Supervisory Control and
Data Acquisition) system is generally unable to be fast enough
to prevent partial or complete system collapse [2]. Automatic
schemes such as decentralized LS methods in which relays
with frequency/voltage measurement are employed, have much
better performance by shedding load blocks at discrete fre-
quency or Rate of Change of Frequency (ROCOF) thresholds.
In distributed LS applications, the load curtailment is carried
out at the same location of frequency measurement. Therefore,
the communication system which is accompany with expenses
of implementation, system reliability reduction and eventually
delays in communication is not needed at all.
In [3] a hierarchical Genetic Algorithm (GA) technique was
Claus Leth Bak
Aalborg University, Denmark
Email: clb@et.aau.dk
proposed to calculate the stage time delays. In [4], the fuzzy
load model and the first fit heuristic was employed to calculate
the relay settings. Different LS methods including a fixed
maximal load to shed and proportionality of shed load to the
ROCOF were investigated in [5].
The work reported in [6] utilizes Artificial Neural Network
(ANN) for directly determining the parameters of the most
effective LS scheme considering system stability. The work
carried out in [7] addresses the estimation of frequency and
ROCOF using a non recursive Newton type procedure follow-
ing by determination of the disturbance magnitude, whereas
for estimation of event scale, the inertia constant of the
generators should be known. Additionally, the minimization
of total amount of shed load was not considered in [6].
Selecting of demonstrative operation and incident scenarios
was considered in layout of 81L UFLS relays in [8]. Large
power systems, to some extend, deal with similar daily pattern
of load, whereas micro grids experience significantly different
scenarios due to intermittent behavior of renewable energies
[9] and this fact was not considered for traditional relays in
[3–5], and adaptive relays in [6], [7]. The schemes with single
objective of minimal shed load [8] may lead to a significant
undershoot in frequency.
In this paper, each set of independent frequency and voltage
thresholds of UFLS and UVLS schemes are combined to
obtain a new synthetic threshold set in term of elliptical
boundaries which may be effective to arrest both undervoltage
and underfrequency initiating disturbances.
This paper is organized as follows: Section II investigates
the differences in characteristic of the UVLS and UFLS
schemes. The proposed solution to coordinate the frequency
and voltage in a new combined LS plan is presented in III.
The simulation set up and results are discussed in sections IV
and V, respectively. Finally, the paper is concluded in section
VI.
II. T HE C OORDINATION B ETWEEN UVLS AND UFLS
According to [2] regarding impacts of voltage variation on
UFLS scheme, a precise perception of the characteristics of
both frequency and voltage collapse is necessary to estab-
lish a proper and effective coordination between underfre-
quency and undervoltage tripping schemes. Underfrequency
and undervoltage collapse are to some extend independent
incidents and may typically have distinct root causes such
as loss of a huge generation for underfrequency or outage
of a determinant transmission line for undervoltage collapse.
Undervoltage event is identified as a local phenomena, whereas
underfrequency event is classified as a global system incident.
Generally, voltage collapse influence the frequency profile
slightly which may not be sufficient enough to make the un-
derfrequency schemes to react. Following an underfrequency
incident, the frequency starts to drop gradually with the event,
but typically not as fast as undervoltage events [10] due to long
inertia time constants of system generators in conventional
power systems.
Voltage incidents are generally associated with the local lack
of reactive power. A slow voltage drop may come from
reaching the generator to full capacity of available reactive
power reserve and a fast voltage decline can be typically
involved to serious disturbances such as transmission line short
circuit or loss. Voltage collapse can come to exist in areas
which either the load is supplied by a faraway generation
with restricted reactive power support or areas with a low
level of local generation and a high portion of motor loads.
Undervoltage events often happen in a shorter range of time
in comparison to underfrequency events [10].
The UVLS and UFLS plans have different characteristics and
are independently established in power system without any
coordination. Study of UFLS scheme is often carried out using
the System Frequency Response models (SFRs) [10], [11].
The effects of voltage changes on the frequency deviation
is not taken into account in these models. Contrariwise, the
UVLS methods that have been proposed so far for setting
of the UVLS relays, do not employ the frequency indices
[1]. Combination of both schemes seems to be necessary in
practice to achieve a more reliable/effective LS scheme. Any
individual use of these indices may lead the power system
toward over load shedding or blackout. Decentralized UVLS
scheme may be employed to avoid local voltage collapse
at many substations. By sharing the existing software and
hardware between both UVLS and UFLS schemes, the UVLS
scheme can be implemented in parallel with underfrequency
in order to be financially affordable.
III. P ROPOSED D ECENTRALIZED AND A DAPTIVE UFVLS
A. Active Power Deficit Estimation
The shortage of active power may be estimated using the
SFR method in (1) introduced in section II [11], [12]. The idea
is based on replacing all generation units of large power system
by a single generating unit with equal dynamical behavior to
achieve an average frequency response.
2Heq .Seq df
Pdef = . (1)
fn dt
l
P l
P • Psh (i, j) the load shed in step i of load j
Seq = Si , Heq = ( Hi .Si )/Seq (2)
i=1 i=1
The quantities in (1) and (2) are as below:
• Pdef the active power deficit which should be shed
• Heq the equivalent inertia time constant
• Hi the inertia time constant of ith generator
• Seq the equivalent apparent power
• Si the apparent power of ith generator
• fn the nominal frequency of power system
• df /dt the rate of change of frequency
• l the number of generators
After a generation outage, the parameters Heq and Seq no
longer remain constant and their amount of change and conse-
quently the resulted error in the active power estimation in (1)
will depend on the bulkiness of the lost generator. Therefore,
in order to obtain the desired accuracy, the terms relevant
to the lost generator should be removed from (2). Actually,
in the decentralized strategy of emergency control which has
no communication system between LS relays, it seems pretty
difficult or even impossible to distinguish which generator
has been lost following an unknown disturbance. Thus, the
dependency of accuracy to the event type in the SFR method
is another drawback which makes it unreliable in practice.
The SFR method may work well for load events, since the
connectivity of all of the generators to the grid remains intact
and hence, the aforementioned parameters are still same as
before the disturbance, but it can not be a comprehensive and
reliable solution for a wide range of incidents.
B. The Number of Stages and Amount of Shed Load
The number of LS steps and the amount of load has to
be shed per step are important key factors which should
be carefully determined during the incipient phase of LS
procedure. The LS schemes with less steps and thus shedding
higher amounts of load per each step, are suitable for large
scale disturbances, but may cause excessive LS, unnecessary
interrupt of consumer services and therefore, less profitability
under small scale load events. In such cases, more steps
with smaller amount of load shed can be more efficient [2].
Contrariwise, insufficient load curtailment in the preliminary
stages of LS procedure may lead to an unsuccessful stop of
frequency collapse or even system blackout. The amount of
load shed per step is usually associated with the total load
that should be shed. Regarding to the limited range of step
number, the more the total load to be shed, the more amount
of load should be shed in each step. The total load shed and
the load shed of each step may be defined as below:
m P n
P Pdef
Psh = Psh (i, j) , Psh (i, j) = k(i, j). 100 (3)
j=1 i=1
where:
• Psh the total amount of load shed
• Pdef the active power deficit from (1)
• m the number of loads which are contributing in LS
• n the number of steps in relays
• k(i, j) the load shed percentage of step i of load j
From (3), the Psh can be rewritten as below:
m n
Pdef X X
Psh = . k(i, j) (4)
100 j=1 i=1
In order to have a proper LS scheme and capture the frequency
downfall, the total load shed should be greater or at least equal
to the active power deficit as follows:
Psh ≥ Pdef (5)
Combining of (4) and (5) can yield:
m X
n
X (negative value of both xf and yv ) is the third quarter. Load
k(i, j) ≥ 100 (6)
j=1 i=1
In order to be sure about satisfying the inequality (6) even
under the worst possible cases, one conservative way is to
assume the minimum value for terms k(i, j) as below:
k(i, j) = kmin ∀i, j (7)
By applying (7) in (6), the red line boundary for the load shed
percentage of each step can be determined as:
kmin ≥ 100/(m.n) (8)
The size of the largest generator or the pick-up capacity of
the interconnecting tie lines in the power system is generally
selected as the worst case for estimation of kmin . By alleviation
of the strict and conservative assumption in (8) and without
sacrificing the system security, the kmin may usually increased
up to 10%. The amount of the load shed in consecutive steps
is usually specified by allotting some portion of the remained
load to be shed in each step.
C. Load Shedding Trigger Criteria
The UVLS scheme may be employed as a complementary
part of UFLS plan in a new combinatorial program in order
to benefit from both voltage and frequency data. The voltage
and frequency information can be measured locally in the LS
relays and may be used as two different state variables in order
to study the dynamical behavior of the power system following
an event. The state variables are defined in pu as below:
xf = (f − f0 )/f0 , yv = (v − v0 )/v0 (9)
where f0 and v0 are the nominal frequency and voltage at the
relay busbar, respectively. By assigning the x axis to xf and
the y axis to yv , the state trajectory can be plotted in the state
plane. In the individual conventional UFLS/UVLS schemes,
when the frequency/voltage exceeds one of the predetermined
thresholds, some portion of the load is automatically discarded.
The table (I) indicates the normal reign and the successive
thresholds for both frequency (bf ) and voltage (bv ) in p.u. One
way to merge the thresholds and make a new combinational
threshold for the new scheme, is to use each set of the
thresholds as the focus points of an elliptical boundary as
follows:
(xf /bf )2 + (yv /bv )2 = 1 (10)
In the new LS program, each new step is precisely triggered
when the state trajectory crosses the corresponding elliptical
boundary. In addition, the load relief is merely done when the
frequency/voltage is less than the nominal values. The only
area in the state plane which meets both above conditions
TABLE I: Frequency and Voltage Thresholds in pu
Boundaries N S1 S2 S3 S4
bf 0.30/60 0.50/60 0.75/60 1.00/60 1.25/60
bv 0.050 0.100 0.125 0.150 0.175
curtailment in the buses with voltage greater or equal to
the value prior the contingency may cause locally reactive
power shortcoming and exacerbate the situation [2]. Hence, the
undervoltage aspect of the new scheme also acts as the built-in
undervoltage block function of conventional relays in order to
inhibit the malfunction operation of individual underfrequency
relay. Similarly, during the voltage dips which frequency is
still in the normal range, the load release should be avoided
[1]. Therefore, the alloted reign to the LS plan is confined to
the area which in the state angle falls in to the range between
π + α and 3π/2 − β.
D. Distribution of Shedding Amount
In the large scale power systems which may have thousand
of load buses, contribution of all loads in the LS scheme is
not practical [10]. Despite of conventional LS methods, in the
present approach, the LS zone is bounded to a specific area
in the vicinity of disturbance location [2], [10]. Following
a contingency in the network, the bus voltages inherently
contain useful information about the location of the event
[11]. The buses nearby the failure point generally experience
more voltage drop than the others and the closer they are,
the more they decrease. Although the frequency decay may
be same for all load buses to some extend, the magnitude
of voltage drop in load buses can be different depending
on their electrical distance to the event location. The buses
with more voltage drop may reach the LS boundaries sooner
than the others and consequently are shed first. Therefore,
during the incipient phase of the LS program, a limited area
in the neighborhood of the incident place is covered and
discarding some portion of the loads are initiated from this
reign. If either the frequency, voltage or both continue to
further decline, the farther loads may gradually get closer to
their corresponding elliptical boundaries and fire the related LS
step. This deployment may radially propagate in the network
until not only the frequency and voltage collapse are prevented,
but they return back to their permissible values [2].
IV. T EST S YSTEM
In order to evaluate the superiority of proposed control
scheme, the WSCC 3-machine system which is well-known
as P.M Anderson 9-bus is chosen as case study. The power
system contains of 3 generators, 6 lines, 3 two winding power
transformers and 3 loads contributing in the LS plan. The
static and dynamic data of the test system can be found in [1].
Synchronous generators are equipped with the IEEE standard
governor GOV-IEESGO and automatic voltage regulator AVR-
IEEEX1. In order to taking into account of the nonlinear
 0.06
1
0.04 1
0.95
0.02

The active power of loads (pu)

0.95 0.9
0
Voltage deviation (pu)

0.85
−0.02
N 0.8
0.9
−0.04
0.5 1 1.5
−0.06
Load A 0.85 Load A
−0.08 Load B S1 Load B
Load C
−0.1 S2 Load C
S3 0.8
−0.12
S4
−0.14
0.75
−0.02 −0.015 −0.01 −0.005 0 0 2 4 6 8 10
Frequency deviation (pu) Time (s)

Fig. 1: The state trajectory of the load buses Fig. 3: The active power of loads

1.02
60
1

59.8 The load voltages (pu) 0.98

0.96 1
Frequency (Hz)

59.6
0.94
59.4 0.95
0.92

59.2 0.9
0.9 Load A
0.88 Load B
59
Load C
0.86 0.85
58.8 0.5 1 1.5
0.84
0 2 4 6 8 10 0 2 4 6 8 10
Time (s) Time (s)

Fig. 2: The grid frequency Fig. 4: The load voltages

behavior of the loads, the voltage dependency of the load ac-
tive power is considered proportional to the voltage deviation
(constant current load type) such as discharge lighting and the
cumulative lumped load of many commercial establishments.
Furthermore, it is assumed that the reactive power of the loads
are changing proportional to the square of the voltage deviation
(constant impedance load type) [11].
V. S IMULATION R ESULTS AND D ISCUSSION
The numerical simulation is conducted in DIgSILENT
PowerFactory 15.0.2 software. The outage of generator G3 is
considered as a serious disturbance with the capacity almost
equal to 27% of system load at 0.5s. Figs.1-3 and Tab.II show
the simulation results throughout 10 seconds of simulation.
Before the contingency at 0.5s, the power system is in the
steady state and all of the variables are in the range such as
the frequency which is equal to 60 Hz (Figs.2-3). In Fig.1,
the deviation of voltage has been plotted it term of frequency
deviation which has been defined in (9). The x and y axis
show the state variables of xf and yv in pu, respectively. The
terms S1 to S4 are standing for the first to forth step of the
LS relays. The Fig.1 displays the state trajectory of the loads
A to C. Following the G3 trip at 0.5s, bus voltages fall almost
instantly (Fig.1 and Fig.4), whereas frequency is still in the
normal range in Fig.1. The variation of the voltage is always
much larger and faster than the frequency changes [10]. The
state trajectories may intersect the LS boundaries depending on
the magnitude of the event and as well as the electrical distance
to the fault location. The distances between the trajectories are
due to difference in the voltages. The more drop of load bus
voltage, the more relevant trajectory far from the origin and
therefore, crossing the boundaries sooner than the other loads.
The state trajectory of the load C crosses over the first and
second elliptical boundaries, but the corresponding curve of
the load B only exceeds the first boundary (Fig.1). Although
the state curves cut the boundaries and relays detect this
 TABLE II: The load shed details
Step Load A Load B Load C
S1 10.4% 18.9% 16.7%
S2 4.1% 4.8% 3.3%
Total 14.5% 23.7% 20.0%
event, the relays do not react in this situation which is called
undervoltage block level, since this reign has been located
in the area which defined with the angle α that discussed in
details in the end of section III-C.
After the outage at 0.5s and before the first LS step at
1.0s (Tab.II), two different phenomenas with same origin are
noticeable in Figs.4 and 3. First, the voltage drop just after the
generator outage instantaneously affect the active and reactive
power of the loads [11] and hence active power of the loads
gradually decline due to the voltage dependency of the loads
which discussed in section IV as can be observed in Fig.3.
Second, due to the loads active power decrease, the voltages
tend to recover toward nominal values to some extend. The
new upward trend of the voltages causes augmentation of the
active power of the loads again. Although, the effect of the
voltage deviation on the loads behavior alleviates the shortage
of the active power, it can not be sufficient to balance the
load-generation level, thus the power system still suffer from
active power deficit and frequency continues to decline steadily
(Fig.2).
During the voltage recovery phenomena (Figs.1 and 4), the
load C has the maximum voltage drop and by gradually decline
of frequency meets the first checkpoint (S1) sooner than the
other loads. As a result, the first step of load C is triggered at
1.0 s with 16.7% load shed (Tab.II). The first shedding step
of the load C has a major influence on the state trajectories,
voltage profile and active power of the loads and it returns the
state variables back into the limited area called S1 boundary.
The relevant voltage and active power jumps are noticeable.
Since the aforementioned shed load is not enough to make a
balance between load and generation, the frequency still drops
but with a lower value of ROCOF in comparison to before the
first LS step of the load C, thus the state trajectory of the other
loads get gradually closer to the S1 boundary. The state curve
of load B and A meets the first boundary S1 at 1.15 s and
1.17 s with 18.9% and 10.4% of shed load, respectively. The
trigger sequence of relays are visible in Fig.3. The next phase
of the shedding steps associated with the second boundary has
been demonstrated in Tab.II.
Finally, the frequency reaches the steady state in another oper-
ation point greater than the minimum value of the permissible
range. In the steady state, the state variables revert to the
normal elliptical boundary N as mentioned in Fig.1 and Tab.I.
The maximum shed load of 23.7% is discarded in the load B
(Fig.3) which is one of closest load to the event location. The
second place in term of magnitude of the shed load belongs
to load C with 20.0% and the last place is associated with
load A with minimum amount of shed load about 14.5% as
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indicated in the Tab.II. Supremacy of the proposed LS scheme
is obvious in localizing the load curtailment in the vicinity of
event location.
VI. C ONCLUSION AND F UTURE W ORKS
The conventional LS procedures are merely based on fre-
quency data and may not be an effective and comprehen-
sive solution for widespread range of disturbances especially
for undervoltage initiating events. This study addresses a
decentralized and adaptive approach for LS relays which
benefits from both locally measured frequency and voltage
informations. In addition to approximate the shortage of active
power based on ROCOF following a serious contingency, the
locally measured voltage in the relay busbar is employed to
localize the LS plan in the reigns with higher voltage decay.
This research demonstrates that the voltage drop magnitude
may be a beneficial criteria of proximity to the event location.
Thus, the UVLS aspect of the proposed UFVLS plan may
act as a complementary part of the conventional UFLS plan.
The proposed methodology needs to be evaluated by a bigger
power systems, more realistic load divisions and frequency
dependent load models.
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