A Minimalistic Approach for Wide-Area
Out-of-Step Identification
G V N YatendraBabu, Nagasekhara Reddy Naguru, and Vaskar Sarkar
Department of Electrical Engineering
Indian Institute of Technology Hyderabad, India
Email: conmp03@iith.ac.in
Abstract—Rotor angle instability (out-of-step or transient in-
stability) in the power system is an immediate predicament to
the safe operation of the system. The out-of-step condition left
untreated may escalate into a widespread outage. Identification of
the out-of-step condition is a necessary precursor to the power
system operation tools such as controlled islanding to prevent
system-wide collapse. The controlled islanding needs system-wide
consideration for an effective mitigation plan. The conventional
out-of-step detection is often devised without considering the
wide-area scenario. A wide-area out-of-step identification ap-
proach based on frequency measurements is evaluated in this
paper. Most of the times, the out-of-step results disconnection of
equipment or part of the system. Hence, the proposed approach
allocates priority to avoid false detection thus preventing un-
necessary system separation or disconnection. The methodology
proposed is thoroughly verified for accuracy and performance
using the 68-Bus system.
Index Terms—Out-of-step detection, power system, rotor angle
stability, transient stability, wide-area monitoring
I. I NTRODUCTION
Sufficiently large disturbance in the power system can
introduce excursion in system parameters. The separation of
rotor angles between individual or groups of generators is one
of the indications of such large disturbances. The separation of
rotor angles results in loss of synchronism between individual
or groups of generators. The phenomenon is also known as the
out-of-step condition or transient instability [1]. The transient
instability can be characterized by power swings, rotor angle
variations, and fluctuations in voltage and current.
Traditionally, the loss of synchronism can be visualized by
time-domain simulation of the power system model [2]. Al-
though the time-domain simulation provides accurate results,
deploying in online application is not feasible because they are
computationally heavy. Instead of analyzing the time-domain
simulation trajectories, the equal-area criterion, which utilizes
the power-angle relation can be used to identify the existence
of the out-of-step condition in the system [1] and [3]. The basic
equal-area criterion applies to the two-area system. In [4], a
power-time curve is utilized in place of the power-angle curve
to facilitate the equal-area criterion in a multi-machine system.
The equal-area criterion depends on the instances of the fault
inception and clearing, which may not be available in real-time
deterministically. Local measurements are used to determine
the out-of-step condition based on the impedance seen by a
978-1-5386-6159-8/18/$31.00 © 2018 IEEE
relay and set of blinders [5] and [6], which can operate in
real-time without considering the system-wide information. In
[7]–[9], instantaneous angular velocity and acceleration are
used to detect the loss of synchronism. Approaches based on
instantaneous measurements may become inferior in detection
when there are outliers in the measurements. Wavelet decom-
position of the speed deviations over three cycles is observed
to determine out-of-step in [10]. In [11] and [12], center-of-
inertia (COI) angles are predicted from measurements, which
are used to identify transient instability in the system. Support
vector classifier is used in [13] and [14] to determine the power
system transient stability status. In [15], decision tree approach
is followed to detect loss of synchronism in the system.
Transient instability or out-of-step identification is a prelim-
inary step to deploy any counter-measures to an impending
widespread outage. The counter-measures such as controlled
islanding splits the system into self-sufficient coherent groups
[16]. Splitting a healthy system based on an incorrect iden-
tification of the instability is not desirable. In addition, the
out-of-step condition should be detected as early as possible
(not too early or not too late) so as to avoid escalation into a
system-wide outage. Further, the loss of synchronism may be
experienced at a single generator or between groups of gener-
ators, which require consideration of a system-wide measure
to determine out-of-step condition. As the instability evolves
quickly [1], the intended identification method should not be
computationally expensive to be an online application. In this
paper, a threshold based out-of-step identification method is
proposed by considering the factors mentioned above.
The rest of the paper is organized as follows. The theoretical
background to out-of-step identification is presented in Section
II. In Section III, the proposed methodology is explained.
Simulation studies are performed to provide validation of the
proposed method in Section IV. Finally, the paper is concluded
in Section V.
II. BACKGROUND
The power delivered by the generator changes when there
is a disturbance or operating state change in the power
system. The sudden change in the demand causes a momentary
accumulation or deprivation of energy at the generator, which
results in increment or decrement in the generator rotor angle
and velocity [1]. The loss of synchronism can be determined

Fig. 1. Power-angle relationship.
by examining the swing curves given by the equation of
motion [1] as expressed below.
dΔωi
Mi = ΔPim − ΔPie − Di Δωi (1)
dt
dΔδi
= ωo Δωi (2)
dt
Where Mi is the inertia constant, Di is the damping constant,
ωo is the synchronous speed, Δδi is the rotor angle, Δωi is
the speed, ΔPim is the mechanical input power, and ΔPie
is the electrical output power deviations of the ith generator.
The active power transfer between two nodes is expressed as
follows.
Es Er
Pe = sin(δ) (3)
X
Where, Es is the sending end voltage, Er is the receiving end
voltage, and X is the total reactance between the two nodes.
On the other hand, the generator can be determined as
unstable when the energy gained during accelerating is greater
than the energy lost during deceleration. This criterion is
known as the equal-area criterion [1]. Graphical illustration
of the equal-area criterion is shown in Fig. 1. The area under
the curve between δ0 and δc is the acceleration period (A1),
whereas, the deceleration period (A2) is between δc and δm .
The instability criterion can be expressed as follows.
 δc  δm
(P m − P e )dδ > (P e − P m )dδ (4)
δ0 δc
In Fig. 1, the area A1 in the case of fault cleared after rotor
angle changed from δ0 to δc1 is equal to the corresponding
A2, which shows that the machine is not going out-of-step.
The area A1 in the case of rotor angle changed from δ0 to δc2
is greater than the corresponding A2. In this case, the energy
gained during the acceleration is more than the energy lost,
which increases the rotor angle further. Hence, the machine
can be determined as unstable. Often, in this analysis, the
system is considered as the generator connected to the infinite
bus.
60.2
60.15
Frequency (Hz)
60.1
60.05
60
59.95
0 0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5 3 3.5 4 4.5 5
Time (sec)
Fig. 2. Oscillatory response of the generator frequency.
Alternatively, the speed- acceleration locus can also be used
to predict the out-of-step condition [9]. The speed and accel-
erations computed from rotor angles can represent the surplus
accelerating power, which may lead to out-of-step condition.
The generator’s out-of-step condition is predicted when the
speed-acceleration locus remains in first and second quarters
of the speed-acceleration plane. In other words, the movement
of speed-acceleration locus from the second quadrant to the
first quadrant represents the possible unstable scenario. In
this work, the proposed method is compared with the speed-
acceleration approach and direct angle comparison.
III. M ETHODOLOGY
Generator coherency in the power system is the phe-
nomenon of the generators responding together following a
disturbance in the form of electromechanical oscillations. The
coherent generator groups are identified using a coherency
measure or property [16]. For a large disturbance, the in-
dividual or groups of generators may separate from each
other, which is the case of rotor angle instability. In this
methodology, an attempt is made to identify the out-of-step
condition by using the coherency measure.
The rotor angle stability basically refers to the ability of
generators to regain synchronism after the same is disturbed
by some fault in the system. That is, all the generators
should be able to closely converge to a common frequency
within finite time following a disturbance. Alternatively, the
angle difference between two generators must vary within a
narrow range and should finally converge to a constant value.
Therefore, the stability status of the system can be monitored
by observing either the frequencies or the angles of generators.
However, the use of only the latest frequency or angle snapshot
may deliver inconclusive result under the oscillatory responses
as are illustrated in Fig. 2. The frequency snapshot at t = 1.1
sec gives the impression as if the system is going to be
unstable. The generator frequencies again come very close to
one another at t = 2.6 sec nullifying the previous impression.
It is, therefore, necessary to observe the variations of generator
frequencies or angles for some time duration before drawing
any inference about stability or coherency. Compared to gen-
erator angles, generator frequencies are easier to observe. This
is because the frequency measurements are readily available
from PMUs. This, in turn, eliminates all the intermediate data
processing burdens. In this work, the frequency trajectory of a
generator is continuously monitored over a fixed-length sliding
time-window. The frequency samples collected through the
particular time-window are packed into a frequency trajectory
vector. The frequency trajectory vector of length m is a vector
of the m frequency measurements including the present sample
as well as the past m − 1 samples. Thus, the frequency
trajectory vector for Generator i (symbolized as Fi ) at the
nth time instant is defined as follows.
 
Fi = fi [n], fi [n − 1], ...., fi [n − m + 1] (5)
where, fi [n − k] is the frequency sample collected from
Generator i at the (n − k)th time instant.
In order to identify the out-of-step status between two gen-
erators, a frequency mismatch index (FMI) is used. The FMI,
in essence, indicates the dissimilarity between two generators
from the point of view of coherency. Different FMIs are
proposed in literature [17] and [18]. Apart from FMIs, there
are also angle-based dissimilarity indices to identify the loss of
coherency [19] and [20]. However, for the sake of simplicity,
the FMI proposed in [17] is used to explain the proposed
approach. The other dissimilarity indices can be similarly
employed.
The FMI between ith and jth generators is determined by
the following equation.
m−1
  2
εi,j [n] = fi [n − k] − fj [n − k] . (6)
k=0
An upper critical value (symbolized as εucr ) is set for the FMI
to detect instability. The loss of synchronism is affirmed when
any εi,j exceeds the above mentioned critical value. The speed
of instability detection depends upon the upper critical value
of the FMI. It is necessary to appropriately tune the length
of the frequency trajectory vector as well as the upper critical
value of the FMI. The length of the frequency trajectory vector
is determined by the following relationship.
m = Tsw Sf . (7)
Here, Tsw indicates the length of the sliding time-window (in
seconds) and Sf is the frequency sampling rate (which can be
the same as or lower than the PMU data reporting rate [21]).
As per the length of the observation window suggested in [22]
to identify stable and unstable cases, the value of Tsw is taken
as five times of the maximum possible fault duration time. The
upper critical value (i.e., εucr ) of the FMI is experimentally
determined by simulating several disturbance events.
The following considerations need to be made while setting
the upper critical value of the FMI.
1) The value of εucr should be as little as possible so that
the occurrence of instability can be quickly detected.
2) The value of εucr should be high enough not to falsely
detect a stable case as an unstable one.
Based upon the above conditions, the upper critical value of
the FMI is determined through the following equation.
εucr = μup εpeak . (8)
Here, εpeak indicates the maximum observed stable FMI (over
all generator pairs and over all the sampling instants). The
value of εpeak is obtained by studying several stable cases. In
order to prevent false instability detection in unobserved stable
cases, the upward safety factor μup is introduced. The upward
safety factor is a positive number with a value no lower than
one.
Real-time application of the proposed transient instability
identification requires an efficient implementation so as to
ensure the timely response. As mentioned earlier, the proposed
method uses measurements from PMUs that can send data at
a high reporting rates (i.e., 30 to 120 samples per second for
a 60 Hz system). The data received needs to be processed
before the next data sample arrives at the control center. The
computationally expensive tasks in the proposed methodology
are the FMI evaluation. It is possible to marginally update an
FMI value when a new set of data samples arrives. Equation
(6) can be rewritten in the recursive form as is shown below.
 2  2
εi,j [n] = fi [n] − fj [n] − fi [n − m] − fj [n − m]
+ εi,j [n − 1]. (9)
The direct use of Equation (6) involves m multiplications, m
subtractions and (m − 1) additions for the calculation of each
FMI. On the other hand, only 2 multiplications, 3 subtrac-
tions and 2 additions are required per FMI in the recursive
calculation. This, in turn, results in significant reduction in
the computational effort for the calculation of FMI values.
Furthermore, εi,j = εj,i . Therefore, it is sufficient to calculate
εi,j s only for j > i. The number of individual FMI values
to be calculated is 0.5ng (ng − 1), where ng is the number of
generators.
IV. C ASE S TUDY
The alertness of the instability detection scheme employed
is verified through offline simulation studies. In all the
studies, the PMU data reporting rate is assumed to be 60
samples/second. The length of frequency trajectory vector
is chosen exactly according to the PMU data reporting rate
and with respect to the fault duration of four cycles. The
nominal system frequency is taken as 60 Hz. The study is
carried out on a 68-bus test system. The test system considered
consists of 16-generators. Each generator is equipped with a
power system stabilizer (PSS). The exciters are of the IEEE-
DC1A type. The generators are represented by means of the
sub-transient model and loads are represented by means of
the constant impedance model. The mechanical torque input
to each generator is assumed to be constant. The detailed
information about lines, generators and loads can be found in
[23]. The PSS parameters for the test system are designed by
following the procedure presented in [24]. All the disturbances
are introduced by creating a three-phase bolted fault at the
 TABLE I
L IST OF STABLE CASES STUDIED FOR PARAMETER TUNING

Case id. Faulty line Case id. Faulty line Case id. Faulty line
1 27 - 53 18 34 - 33 35 52 - 55
2 23 - 22 19 34 - 35 36 54 - 53
3 24 - 23 20 36 - 34 37 55 - 54
4 24 - 68 21 36 - 61 38 56 - 55
5 25 - 54 22 37 - 68 39 57 - 56
6 26 - 25 23 38 - 31 40 58 - 57
7 27 - 37 24 38 - 33 41 59 - 58
8 27 - 26 25 43 - 17 42 60 - 57
9 28 - 26 26 44 - 39 43 60 - 59
10 29 - 26 27 44 - 43 44 63 - 58
11 29 - 28 28 45 - 35 45 63 - 62
12 30 - 53 29 45 - 39 46 63 - 64
13 30 - 61 30 45 - 44 47 65 - 62
14 31 - 30 31 46 - 38 48 65 - 64
15 31 - 53 32 47 - 53 49 66 - 56
16 32 - 30 33 49 - 46 50 66 - 65
17 33 - 32 34 52 - 37 51 67 - 66

Fig. 4. Rotor frequency and angle dynamics following the fault at Line 18-50.

Fig. 3. Rotor frequency and angle dynamics following the fault at Line 41-42.

middle of a line. The fault is cleared after four cycles by

tripping the respective line. The εpeak is identified by studying
the stable cases, which are generated by applying the above
mentioned fault scenario to all the lines as listed in Table I.
The maximum observed stable FMI value is found to be 1.764
Hz2 . The FMI upper critical value is conservatively chosen as
150%.
All the simulations are started from a steady-state that is
obtained by carrying out load flow analysis with the given
generation and load profile in [23]. After saving the trajectories
of all the quantities, those are resampled (as per the PMU
reporting rate) to identify the time instant at which a method
can detect the transient instability. Two unstable cases and
one stable case are presented. The first unstable case (Case-1)
results because of the fault at Line 41-42. The second unstable
case (Case-2) is caused by the fault at Line 18-50. For the fault
Fig. 5. Rotor frequency and angle dynamics following the fault at Line 25-54.
at Line 25-54, the system remains stable, which is the Case-3.
The rotor frequency and angle dynamics of the Case-1, Case-2,
and Case-3 are plotted in Fig. 3, Fig. 4, and Fig. 5, respectively.
Apart from the relation in Equation (6), the relations proposed
in [11] and [9] are also attempted to identify the out-of-step
condition. A comparison of times taken by different methods
to detect instability following the disturbance is produced in
Table II.
It can be seen that the methodology proposed always pro-
vides fastest response than [11]. Although the fastest response
is provided by [9], the particular methodology suffers from the
 TABLE II
I NSTABILITY DETECTION TIME COMPARISON
Instability detection time (sec)
Fault
Status Speed-acceleration Direct angle FMI-based
at Line
relation [9] comparison [11] criterion
41-42 Unstable 0.9333 3.3833
18-50 Unstable 0.6167 2.1000
25-54 Stable 0.6500 —–
Fig. 6. The speed-acceleration locus of Generator 11 between 1.5 seconds
and 3.5 seconds following the fault at Line 25-54.
problem of false instability detection. To demonstrate the false
identification, the Case-3 is considered, which is a stable case
as shown in Fig. 5. The angle comparison and FMI-based
approach are not detected any out-of-step condition in the
Case-3. However, the speed-acceleration criterion identified
an out-of-step condition in the Case-3, which is incorrect.
For illustration, the speed-acceleration curve of Generator 11
between 1.5 seconds and 3.5 seconds following the fault at
Line 25-54 (Case-3) is plotted in Fig. 6, which satisfies the
out-of-step condition.
V. C ONCLUSION
In this work, the coherency measure is extended for de-
tection of rotor angle instability following a disturbance dur-
ing the real system operation. The out-of-step condition is
identified through a frequency mismatch index by observing
generator frequencies in real-time. The frequency mismatch
index is continuously evaluated over a moving time window.
The loss of synchronism between two generators (thus, the
inception of rotor angle instability) is indicated by the crossing
of a threshold by the FMI. The respective critical FMI value
can be set experimentally by observing the FMI range over
several stable cases. Case studies confirm the effectiveness of
the proposed method in terms of detection time and accuracy.
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