American Journal of Energy and Power Engineering

2017; 4(5): 6-12

http://www.aascit.org/journal/ajepe
ISSN: 2375-3897

Performance Evaluation of the

Voltage Stability Indices in the Real
Conditions of Power System
Rahmat Allah Moradi, Roohalamin Zeinali Davarani*,
Mohsen Safarzaei
Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Graduate University of Advanced
Technology, Kerman, Iran

Keywords
Voltage Stability,
Voltage Stability Indices,
Voltage Collapse,
Modal Analysis
Received: May 21, 2017
Accepted: June 14, 2017
Published: August 23, 2017
Email address
r.zeinali@kgut.ac.ir (R. Z. Davarani)
*
Corresponding author
Citation
Rahmat Allah Moradi, Roohalamin Zeinali Davarani, Mohsen Safarzaei. Performance Evaluation
of the Voltage Stability Indices in the Real Conditions of Power System. American Journal of
Energy and Power Engineering. Vol. 4, No. 2, 2017, pp. 6-12.
Abstract
To prevent voltage collapse in the power systems, accurate estimates of the power
system performance are necessary. In the previous studies only by adding reactive loads
to weakest buses, the voltage stability of the power system lines are evaluated. Whereas
in the real conditions of the power systems, the active and reactive loads are increased
simultaneously and to provide actual prediction of lines voltage stability the effects of
increasing both active and reactive loads should be considered. In this paper, the
performance of some most important line voltage stability indices such as Lmn, FVSI,
LQP and LCPI are evaluated in real conditions of the power system, and it is shown that
the results of these indices are not identical. While that, these indices provide similar
results as only reactive loads increased. In addition, to evaluate the obtained results, by
using modal analysis method the lines that have most participation in voltage instability
are detected. This study is investigated on the IEEE 14-bus test system.

1. Introduction
The modern electrical power system is one of the largest and most complex systems
that have been operated with a high level of reliability for more than one century [1]. The
voltage stability of a power system is one of the most important phenomena that should
be analyzed carefully [2]. Since the generations and transmission lines have been utilized
near to critical limits, voltage instability may occur in the power systems under heavily
loaded conditions. In these systems because of insufficient power delivered to loads,
some or all buses voltages decrease rapidly, which may lead to severe blackout in a
considerable part of the power system [3].
To evaluate the potentially of voltage instability and determining the system loading
limits, several indices are introduced in the literatures. In [4], the index L is defined to
determine the weakest system bus. In this index by increasing some of the power system
loads, the instability voltage of system buses is evaluated. In [5], the index LQP is
introduced and the performance of this index is assessed against changes in reactive
loads. In [6], the modal analysis method is used to identify the weak points of the power
system. In [7], the index Lmn is defined to study the voltage stability of power system.
For this purpose, by increasing the reactive loads, the voltage stability limits of a power
system is determined. In [8], to study the voltage stability the index FVSI is defined and
7 Rahmat Allah Moradi et al.: Performance Evaluation of the Voltage Stability Indices in the Real Conditions of Power System

its performance is compared with the indices LQP and Lmn. briefly described in this section.
This study is done on IEEE 30 bus test system and by
increasing the reactive loads, the voltage stability is 2.1. P-V and Q-V Curves
evaluated. In [9], [10] the efficiency of voltage stability The P-V and the Q-V curves are the familiar method that
indices is studied on IEEE 14 bus test system. For this, by be used to predict the voltage stability in a power system.
increasing the reactive loads, the voltage stability indices are These curves are used to determine the loading margins.
obtained, and the results are analyzed. In [11], the index Since the power system load is increased slightly, in each
LCPI is defined and its performance is compared to the step, it is necessary to obtain the power flows until the knee
previous indices. To do so, by increasing the reactive loads of point of the P-V curve is reached. The margin between the
the power system, the indices are obtained and their values knee point and the current operating point in the P-V curve is
are compared. In [12], the sensitivity and accuracy of the used as the voltage stability criterion [20]. In addition, by
voltage stability indices than reactive loads variations are using the Q-V curve it is possible to obtain the maximum
evaluated. In [13], based on maximum loading capability of reactive power that can be added to the weakest bus before
the bus a new voltage stability index is proposed to predict reaching voltage collapse.
the voltage collapse in the power system. Since the voltage
stability is an important factor in optimal allocating of 2.2. Modal Analysis
Distributed generations (DGs) in the electric grid, the
performance of various voltage stability indices on optimally Modal analysis method can be used to study the voltage
utilizing DGs units are evaluated in [14]. In [15], the stability of a power system. In this method by linearized the
sensitivities of voltage stability indices to the network power flow equations, the eigenvalues that be related to
disturbances are assessed, and the obtained results are buses voltage are obtained. The linearized steady state
validated using PSAT software. In [16], to analysis the system power voltage equations are given by [5]:
voltage stability of radial distribution systems a stability
index named line stability indicator (LSI) is developed. In  ∆P  =  J p θ J pv   ∆θ 
(1)
[17], by using the voltage stability L-index the effect of the ∆Q  J Qθ J Qv  ∆V 
transformer tap changing on the voltage stability is studied.
In [18], to assessment the system voltage stability a new Where ∆θ and ∆V are the incremental change in bus
technique is proposed based on the network response voltage angle and magnitude respectively. ∆P and ∆Q are
structural characteristics. relatively the incremental change in bus real power and
As seen, in the literatures the line voltage stability indices reactive power injection.
such as Lmn, FVSI, LQP, and LCPI are only investigated into By keeping P constant at each operating point, the
reactive power variations. While that, in actual conditions, incremental relationship between Q and V is obtained as below:
both active and reactive loads are changed. Although, the
−1
voltage of power system buses is more affected by reactive ∆V = J ∆Q (2)
R
power than active power, but in the heavily loaded power
system, the effect of active power on buses voltage can be Where JR is named reduced Jacobian matrix and obtained
noticeable. Therefore, to thoroughly investigate the as:
performance of voltage stability indices the variations of both
−1
active and reactive loads should be considered. So, in this J = (J −J .J .J ) (3)
R Qv Qθ Pθ Pv
paper the performance of voltage stability indices are
evaluated by simultaneously increasing of the active and The corresponding ith modal voltage variation is obtained
reactive loads. This study is performed on the IEEE 14 bus as below:
test system. This paper is organized as follows:
In Section 2, the voltage instability is defined and the 1
mathematical equations of the voltage stability indices are vi = q (4)
provided. In Section 3, the case study and the obtained results
λi i
are presented. The necessary discussion is also provided in
this section. Finally, the conclusions are given in Section 4. If all the eigenvalues are positive, the system is considered
to be voltage stable and by evaluating the minimum positive
eigenvalues the potential for the voltage collapse can be
2. Voltage Stability Indices predicted. In addition, by using the participation matrix, the
The voltage stability indices can be used to investigate the weakest buses and lines that have the maximum contribution
voltage stability of a power system. By these indices, the on critical eigenvalues can be determined.
critical buses and lines in a power system are detected, and 2.3. Lmn Index
the voltage stability margins of a system are obtained [19].
The indices used to examine the system voltage stability are By using the concept of the transmission power, the line
 American Journal of Energy and Power Engineering 2017; 4(5): 6-12 8

stability index Lmn is defined. The voltage quadratic   X 

X 2
equations are stable if the discriminant of them is set to be LQP = 4   2 Pi +Q j  (7)
2
greater or equal than zero. If the discriminant is smaller than  Vi   Vi 
zero, the roots will be imaginary, which means that cause
voltage instability in the system. The single line of an Where Pi is the active power flow at the sending bus.
interconnected network is shown in Figure 1. To maintain the voltage stability of the power system the
index must be less than unity.
2.6. LCPI Index

By considering the line charging reactance and relative

direction of active power flow in the line with respect to
reactive power flow; an improved Line Collapse Proximity
Index (LCPI) is developed [11]. The exact model of a
transmission line is usually described by two port equivalent
circuit using ABCD matrix as:
Figure 1. Single-line diagram of a transmission line.
V  =  A B  V j 
i
(8)
Based on the transmission line model shown in Figure 1,  I  C
i
D  I j 
the Lmn index is defined as [7]:
Where A, B, C, and D are known as the transmission
4X Q j parameters of the two-port network, and they can be
L mn = (5) expressed as:
[V i sin(θ − δ ) ]2
ZY
A = (1 + ) (9)
Where, X is the line reactance, Qj is the reactive power 2
flow at the receiving bus; Vi is the voltage of sending bus; θ
is the line impedance angle, and δ is the voltage angle B = Z (10)
difference between sending and receiving buses.
ZY
When the value of Lmn for a line is closed to 1, that line is C = Y (1 + ) (11)
closer to be instable. To maintain a secure condition, the Lmn 4
index should be less than 1.
D = A (12)
2.4. FVSI Index
With respect to the above equations the index LCPI is
The line stability index FVSI is derived based on the defined as:
current equation in a transmission line. This index is defined
as below [8]: 4 A cos α ( Pj B cos β + Q j sin β )
LCPI = (13)
(V i cos δ )
2
2
4 Z Q
j
FV SI = (6)
2 Where a, and b are the phase angles of parameters A and B
Vi X
respectively. To provide a secure condition, the value of
Where Z is the line impedance. LCPI index should be maintained less than 1.
When FVSI index of a line goes beyond 1, one of the
buses connected to this line will experience a significant 3. Simulation Results
voltage drop leading to system voltage collapse.
The voltage stability analysis is performed on IEEE 14 bus
2.5. LQP Index test system. The single line diagram of the test system is
shown in the Figure 2, and its parameters can be found in
The index LQP is defined to evaluate the voltage stability [21].
in the transmission lines and obtained as follows [4]:
9 Rahmat Allah Moradi et al.: Performance Evaluation of the Voltage Stability Indices in the Real Conditions of Power System

Figure 2. Single line diagram of the IEEE 14 bus test system.

At first by using the P-V and Q-V curves the loading margin of the test system is obtained. For this purpose, by considering
the constant power factor for each bus and increasing the loads, the P-V curve is obtained as Figure 3. As seen, as the power
system load is gradually increased, the buses voltage are decreased such that when the load factor is increased more than 1.779,
the system experienced voltage instability.

Figure 3. P-V curves for IEEE 14 bus test system.

By the Q-V curves the maximum reactive power can be added to load buses before the system suffers a voltage collapse are
obtained, and the results are shown in Figure 4. As seen from Figure 4, the buses 12 and 14 have the lowest margin of reactive
 American Journal of Energy and Power Engineering 2017; 4(5): 6-12 10

power, which indicates that they are the most critical buses in the test system.

Figure 4. Margin of reactive power in IEEE 14 bus test system.

To evaluate these results by using the modal analysis magnitude of eigenvalues are decreased. At the critical
method, the voltage stability of the test system is analyzed at operational case (Case 2) the smallest eigenvalue is equal to
two operational Cases 1 & 2. In Case 1 and Case 2 the 2.32. The bus participation factor for this mode is shown in
loading factor is considered equal to 1.5 and 1.779 Figure 5. The results show that bus 14 has the most
respectively (see Figure 3). The eigenvalues for these cases participation in this eigenvalue and accordingly bus 14 is the
are obtained and the results are shown in Table 1. weakest bus on the test system.
As mentioned before, the indices Lmn, FVSI, LQP and
Table 1. Eigenvalues of the IEEE 14 bus test system in operational Cases 1 LCPI are used to detect the weak lines of a power system. In
& 2.
the previous studies to evaluate the performance of these
Case 1 Case 2 indices, by adding a big reactive load to the weakest buses, the
λ1=59.13 λ1=54.72 weakest lines are detected. However, in the real conditions of a
λ2=36.97 λ2=35.88
power system, the both active and reactive loads are varied.
λ3=19.98 λ3=19.07
λ4=17.67 λ4=17.46 Therefore, only considering the variation of reactive loads may
λ5=14.18 λ5=12.37 be led to unrealistic results of system voltage stability. In this
λ6=2.489 λ6=2.32 section, at first by increasing only reactive loads in weakest
λ7=10.26 λ7=8.94 buses (buses 10, 11 and 14) the voltage stability of system
λ8=5.15 λ8=5.03
lines are investigated and the results are shown in Table 2. The
λ9=7.099 λ9=6.97
indices results are just shown for two lines that have the
As seen, in these cases, all the eigenvalues are positive and maximum values. For example, the results show that when a
system is voltage stable. The results show that as the system reactive load as 0.73pu is added to bus 14, the lines 9-14 and
approaches to instability (increasing the load factor) the 13-14 are the weakest lines of the test system.

Figure 5. Bus participation factors of IEEE 14 bus test system at the critical eigenvalue for Case 2.
11 Rahmat Allah Moradi et al.: Performance Evaluation of the Voltage Stability Indices in the Real Conditions of Power System

Table 2. Line voltage stability indices for increasing only reactive loads in obtained and the participation of lines at the lower
weakest buses of IEEE 14 bus test system. eigenvalues are shown in Table 3. As seen when a reactive
Voltage Stability Indices load is added at bus 14, the lines 9-14 and 13-14 have the
Load (p.u.) Line
Lmn FVSI LQP LCPI maximum participation in lower eigenvalue (λ3=0.2258).
9-10 0.606 0.598 0.5572 0.606 In the following, the line voltage stability are assessed for
Q10=0.95
10-11 0.5801 0.5698 0.4840 0.5309 two real conditions that defined before as Case 1 (increasing
6-11 0.7835 0.8473 0.6846 0.7187 both of active and reactive loads in all the system buses with
Q11=0.86
10-11 0.6408 0.6882 0.5819 0.5577 loading factor equal to 1.5) and Case 2 (increasing both of
Q14=0.73
9-14 0.8375 0.8867 0.7073 0.8004 active and reactive loads in all the system buses with loading
13-14 0.7895 0.8341 0.6560 0.7479 factor equal to 1.779).
The voltage stability indices Lmn, FVSI, LQP and LCPI are
To verify the obtained results of these indices, by modal obtained for above considered conditions and the results are
analysis the eigenvalues of the IEEE 14 bus test system are shown in Table 4.
Table 3. Branch participations of IEEE 14 bus test system at critical eigenvalue when only reactive loads increased.

Adding reactive load to bus 10 as Adding reactive load to bus 11 as Adding reactive load to bus 14 as
Base Condition
Q10=0.95p.u Q11=0.86p.u Q14=0.73p.u
Critical eigenvalues is λ7=2.71 Critical eigenvalues is λ5=0.3385 Critical eigenvalues is λ6=0.4945 Critical eigenvalues is λ3=0.2258
Line PLij Line PLij Line PLij Line PLij
7-8 1 9-10 1 6-11 1 9-14 1
7-9 0.84 7-9 0.92 10-11 0.17 13-14 0.94
1-5 0.59 10-11 0.76 9-10 0.13 7-9 0.24

Table 4. Line voltage stability indices for simultaneous increasing of active and reactive loads in the IEEE 14 bus test system for two conditions load factor 1.5
(Case 1) and load factor 1.779 (Case 2).

Case 1 Case 2
Line
Lmn FVSI LQP LCPI Lmn FVSI LQP LCPI
1-2 0.012 0.011 0.083 0.162 0.253 0.217 0.058 0.434
1-5 0.054 0.045 0.170 0.266 0.412 0.308 0.075 0.617
2-3 0.029 0.025 0.198 0.171 0.072 0.053 0.364 0.370
2-4 0.006 0.005 0.085 0.177 0.164 0.133 0.076 0.406
2-5 0.042 0.039 0.007 0.166 0.204 0.179 0.060 0.366
3-4 0.063 0.067 0.041 0.046 0.073 0.079 0.015 0.124
4-5 0.017 0.017 0.009 0.037 0.034 0.035 0.054 0.128
4-7 0.060 0.060 0.094 0.060 0.108 0.105 0.001 0.108
4-9 0.033 0.033 0.044 0.033 0.268 0.251 0.023 0.268
5-6 0.102 0.099 0.020 0.102 0.296 0.272 0.064 0.296
6-11 0.063 0.062 0.048 0.091 0.124 0.120 0.091 0.175
6-12 0.048 0.047 0.035 0.093 0.102 0.097 0.066 0.185
6-13 0.073 0.071 0.052 0.124 0.153 0.144 0.097 0.244
7-9 0.065 0.065 0.057 0.065 0.180 0.179 0.150 0.180
9-10 0.021 0.021 0.018 0.028 0.046 0.046 0.039 0.061
9-14 0.062 0.060 0.043 0.120 0.146 0.136 0.086 0.256
10-11 0.036 0.036 0.031 0.050 0.072 0.073 0.063 0.101
12-13 0.024 0.024 0.011 0.033 0.052 0.051 0.023 0.070
13-14 0.060 0.059 0.043 0.106 0.127 0.121 0.082 0.216

As seen, by considering the real condition of power system
and increasing the both active and reactive loads, the values
of almost line voltage stability indices are increased.
Although the results of some indices in detecting the weakest
lines are not identical. For instance, in Case 2 whereas the
indices Lmn, FVSI and LCPI show that the lines 1-5 is the
weakest line in real conditions, but by the index LQP the line
2-3 is detected as a weakest line. In addition, the value of
index LCPI for the weakest lines of the test system is
noticeably greater than other indices.
To evaluate these results by the modal analysis method the
branch participations at the critical eigenvalue of Case 2 are
obtained and the results are shown in Table 5. The results
show that at this critical eigenvalue, the line 1-5 has the
maximum participation and so that the indices Lmn, FVSI,
and LCPI truly detect the weakest line of the test system. In
addition, since Case 2 is near to voltage instability, so the
high values of index LCPI shows that this index can more
accurately predict the voltage stability of the power system
lines. While that when only the increasing of reactive power
loads is considered all the voltage stability indices have the
similar prediction of weakest lines on the power system (see
Table 2).
 American Journal of Energy and Power Engineering 2017; 4(5): 6-12
Table 5. Branch participations of the IEEE 14 bus test system at critical
eigenvalue for simultaneous increasing of active and reactive loads for load
factor 1.779 (Case 2).
Critical eigenvalue is λ6=2.32
Line PLij
1-5 1 [10] R. Tiwari, K. R. Niazi, V. Gupta, ‘Line Collapse Proximity
7-9 0.31
5-6 0.25
4-9 0.24
2-4 0.22
4. Conclusion
In this paper, the performance of line voltage stability
indices are evaluated in different conditions. The results
show that by adding only reactive loads to weakest buses the
indices prediction of weakest lines are similar. However,
when the evaluation is done on real conditions of power
system as the both active and reactive loads are increased in
the all of the system buses, the indices prediction of weakest
lines are not similar. The analytical results from modal
analysis method show that the results obtained from index
LCPI are more accurate than other indices.
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