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A Practical Approach to Inertia Distribution

Monitoring and Impact of Inertia Distribution
on Oscillation Baselining Study for Renewable
Penetrated Power Grid
Gayathri K, Student Member, IEEE, and Manas Kumar Jena , Senior Member, IEEE

Abstract—The high penetration of inverter-based resources
(IBRs) will substantially change the dynamic behavior of the power
system including inertia distribution. Real-time inertia distribution
monitoring is important to support power system operation in
future low inertia grids. This article presents the development and
validation of a center of power-based inertia distribution estimation
technique utilizing the measurements available from the phasor
measurement units of the wide-area measurement systems. The
suggested technique is validated on the 246-bus northern regional
power grid of Indian power system. The impact of different pen-
etration levels of IBRs on the proposed inertia distribution index
(IDI) is also studied. The suggested index works purely on power
system measurements and does not need any model information.
Further, the impact of change in IDI on oscillation baselining study
is explored.
Index Terms—Inertia distribution index (IDI), phasor
measurement unit (PMU), power system inertia, power system
monitoring, renewable energy sources (RES).
I. INTRODUCTION
A. Background
N POWER systems, inertia refers to the stored energy in
I rotating masses. Energy generation in traditional power sys-
tems is mainly from thermal, hydro, and nuclear power plants
where synchronous generators (SG) are employed. The rota-
tional inertia of the SG provides kinetic energy in case of any
load-generation imbalance in the system. It helps to maintain the
frequency deviation within limits and thereby ensures system
stability. Rising environmental concerns lead to increased pen-
etration of green energy sources, such as solar and wind power
plants into the existing power grid. The integration of renewable
energy into the system has caused a drastic reduction in the
system rotational inertia. The solar power plants do not have any
rotating mass and hence are inertia less. Even though the blades
of wind generators can provide inertia, they are connected to
the system via power electronic converters. These back-to-back
converters electrically decouple the generators from the grid.
Therefore, net inertia provided by these power plants to the
system is nearly zero. It can cause stability issues in the system
and can even lead to blackouts [1], [2].
It is evident from the prediction done on the U.K. power grid
that the system inertia will reduce to 30% by the year 2033/34
as compared to 2013/14 [3]. A system with low inertia will be
highly prone to issues, such as stress, instability, and insecure
operation. Secure operation of a deregulated system with high
renewable energy source (RES) penetration is a major task for
operators due to its uncertainty. In this regard, there is a need to
monitor the power system with higher agility to enhance wide-
area situational awareness (WASA). Power system monitoring
can be broadly defined as collection, processing, and presenting
large data available from the grid. As more renewable sources
are getting integrated to the grid, real-time estimation of power
system inertia will help the system operators to manage grid
inertia and thereby ensure stable operation [4], [5]. In this regard,
system operators are already looking for innovative and scalable
wide-area monitoring system (WAMS) solutions for enhanced
power system monitoring, control, and protection. General Elec-
tric (GE) phasorpoint, real-time dynamics monitoring system
(RTDMS) are examples of such industry software developed
for power system monitoring [6], [7]. Further, power system
inertia monitoring is going to be one of the most relevant WAMS
solutions for the control rooms of future power systems with
major power generation from RES. The scope of this article is to
enhance WASA of the power system by incorporating an inertia
distribution index (IDI) monitoring scheme into the power sys-
tem monitoring application in the energy management system.
Further, the possible impact of change in IDI on oscillation
baselining study (OBS) is explored.

B. Related Works
Manuscript received 2 May 2022; revised 19 October 2022; accepted 9 Several methods are proposed in the literature for power
December 2022. This work was supported by the Science and Engineering
Research Board, Department of Science and Technology, Government of India system inertia constant estimation [8], [9], [10], [11], [12],
under project SRG/2021/000190. (Corresponding author: Manas Kumar Jena.) [13], [14], [15], [16]. Inertia estimation can be classified into
The authors are with the Department of Electrical Engineering, In- two categories: i) estimation based on ambient data, and ii)
dian Institute of Technology Palakkad, Palakkad 678007, India (e-mail:
122114006@smail.iitpkd.ac.in; mkj@iitpkd.ac.in). estimation based on disturbance data. From ambient data,
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/JSYST.2022.3228966 inertia can be estimated using system identification method [8].
1937-9234 © 2022 IEEE. Personal use is permitted, but republication/redistribution requires IEEE permission.
See https://www.ieee.org/publications/rights/index.html for more information.

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2 IEEE SYSTEMS JOURNAL
Swing equation-based techniques are commonly used for inertia
estimation of systems after a large disturbance [10]. Further, a
microperturbation method-based inertia estimation technique is
discussed in [13]. However, perturbation is not desirable in an
actual system. In [11] the total inertia of the GB power system
is estimated using the the frequency transients. Further, there are
machine learning-based inertia calculation techniques discussed
in the literature [3], [17]. In [17] random forest technique is used
for inertia estimation from ambient data. In the case of machine
learning-based techniques, the main constraint is the availability
of data and processing speed. Further, in all these cases, inertia
of the total system will be calculated. With the high integration
of renewable sources, the assumption that frequency is a global
signal is no longer valid. Renewable generators will be installed
where natural resources are available. The future power system
will witness a greater and regional variability in frequency.
Center of inertia (COI) is a more meaningful way of rep-
resenting system inertia for a multimachine system [18]. The
COI location calculation is useful for multiple purposes. One
such example is to find the best location for employing inertia
emulation controllers. However, COI calculation is not efficient
for large and meshed power systems. In such case, inertia
distribution monitoring (IDM) will be more useful to the system
operator [19]. IDI is an estimation of the electrical distance of
each bus from the COI location.
System classification using IDI is a relatively unexplored area
of research. In [19] and [20], IDI is calculated based on the COI.
However, this method requires real-time inertia information of
the system, which is not reported by the phasor measurement
units (PMUs) connected. IDI calculation based on model infor-
mation is discussed in [21]. However, only measurement-based
solutions are generally preferred over model based solutions
for real-time monitoring applications. Hence, the motivation
of this article is to come up with a purely measurement-based
IDM scheme, which can be easily integrated into state-of-the-art
power system monitoring software solutions.
C. Contribution
The research gap in the existing literature motivated us to work
on this problem statement. The contributions of this article are
as follows.
1) We proposed a method to estimate IDI based on measure-
ments obtained from PMUs.
2) The suggested scheme is validated on the largest regional
power grid of the Indian power system.
3) The work is extended to see the impact of RES integration
on the power system inertia distribution.
4) The effect of IDI on small signal stability is analytically
established and the inferences drawn are validated through
time-domain simulation.
5) The impact of change in IDI on triggering thresholds
used for oscillatory stability monitoring (OSM) is demon-
strated.
D. Organization
The rest of this article is organized as follows. Section II
explains the proposed method for IDI calculation.The analytical
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expressions to establish the impact of change in IDI on power
system oscillatory modes are derived in Section III. The details
of the test system used and results of various case studies
conducted are explained in Section IV. Salient features of
the proposed scheme are highlighted in Section V. Finally,
Section VI concludes the manuscript.
II. FORMULATION OF COP-BASED IDI
Inertia of a single machine can be represented by the inertia
constant, H
Jω 2
H = (1)
2SB
where J is the moment of inertia, ω is the angular frequency, and
SB is the base apparent power. However, the individual machine
frequencies may not be always same during a disturbance [22].
In such cases, the total inertia for large system can be expressed
in an efficient manner using the concept of COI. The COI can
be calculated using the inertia and frequency information from
all the network generators [19]
n
i=1 Hi fgi
fCOI =  n (2)
i=1 Hi
where n is the number of generators, Hi and fgi are inertia and
frequency of the ith generator, respectively.
However, the inertia time constant is difficult to access in
real time because the number of units being dispatched from
a generation plant can vary during operation. Thus, in this
study a center of power (COP)-based IDI is suggested using
measurements available from PMUs. It is to be noted that the
moment of inertia for the COI reference frame is equivalent to
the actual electric power output for the COP-based reference
frame for all practical reasons [23], [24]. This condition holds
good if generators are operated very close to their rated power
and thankfully, for economic reasons, this is followed in actual
practice [23]. Thus, the COP frequency reference of an n-bus
system can be defined as
n
i=1 Pi fgi
fCOP =  n (3)
i=1 Pi
where Pi is current power generation schedule of ith generator.
Now, the electrical distance of each bus to the COP location can
be calculated by comparing the COP frequency to the frequency
of each bus following a small disturbance:
 T +t0
dk = (fbk (τ ) − fCOP (τ ))2 dτ (4)
t0
where t0 represents the instance at which disturbance is created,
T is the window length, and fb is the bus frequency. The alphabet
k represents bus number. The IDI for each bus can be calculated
by normalizing it to the highest index
dk
IDIk = (5)
max dk
k{1,....N }
where N is the total number of buses in the system. This index
represents the electrical distance of each bus from the COP. A
low value of IDI indicates that the bus is near to COP and vice
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K AND JENA: PRACTICAL APPROACH TO IDM AND IMPACT OF INERTIA DISTRIBUTION ON OBS FOR RENEWABLE PENETRATED POWER GRID 3

defined as the electrical distance from bus 1 to bus 3. Therefore,

it can be inferred that
0 ≤ αmin ≤ α ≤ αmax ≤ 1 (11)
 
where αmin = (Xd1
+ XT 1 )/X and αmax = (X − − Xd2
XT 2 )/X. The total reactance of the system is given by
 
Fig. 1. Single line diagram of two-machine system. X = Xd1 + XT 1 + Xd2 + XT 2 + XL . The electromechanical
eigenvalue of the above-mentioned system is represented by

ω s V 0 H1 + H2 E1 E2
versa. COP may not be located exactly on a particular bus. In λα = j . (12)
2X H1 H2 (1 − α)E1 + αE2
such cases, the nearest bus to COP is the one having lowest value
of IDI. V0 is the voltage at bus 3. The COI location of the system, α∗
The nearest bus to COP can be calculated as is given by
kmin = argmin dk . (6) E1 H2
α∗ = (13)
k{1,....N } E1 H2 + E2 H1
Similarly, the furthest location from COP can be calculated 1
as α∗ = E2 H1
. (14)
1+ E1 H2
kmax = argmax dk . (7)
k{1,....N } The above-mentioned expressions are reported in [19]. We
have extended this work further to find out the eigenvalue sensi-
It is to be noted that the power system is always prone to small tivity. Eigenvalue sensitivity is a measure of how certain factors
disturbances. Thus, (4) can be further extended for real-time IDI are influencing small-signal stability of the system under study.
calculation. In that case COP at each instant can be calculated This analysis can be carried out for improving the small-signal
using the following: stability as well as to study the impact of change in parameters
n on small-signal stability. In this particular work, eigenvalue
i=1 Pi (t)fi (t)
fCOP (t) =  n . (8) sensitivity analysis is carried out to investigate the influence of
i=1 Pi (t)
change in inertia at different locations on interarea oscillation. In
Instead of scheduled power, real-time active power measure- effect, we are exploring the impact of IDI on interarea oscillation.
ments from each generator are used for the above-mentioned Sensitivity with respect to the IDI is given by
calculation. The distance of each bus from COP location is given
∂λα j ωs V0 H1 + H2 E1 E2 (E1 − E2 )
by the following: = (15)
 t ∂α 2β 2X H1 H2 [(1 − α)E1 + αE2 ]2

dk (t) = (fbk (τ ) − fCOP (τ ))2 dτ (9) ωs V0 H1 + H2 E1 E2
t−t β= . (16)
2X H1 H2 (1 − α)E1 + αE2
where t is the instance at which the calculation is carried out and
t is the window length considered for calculation. IDI equation Further simplifying the above-mentioned equation
will be further modified as given in the following: 
∂λα j  ω s V 0 H1 + H2 E1 E2
dk (t) = (E1 − E2 ) .
IDIk (t) = . (10) ∂α 2 2X H1 H2 [(1 − α)E1 + αE2 ]3
max dk (t) (17)
k{1,....n}
Now consider a large system with many generators and in-
III. EFFECT OF IDI ON EIGENVALUE SENSITIVITY terconnected transmission lines. It can be reduced to a system
having two areas: one area having higher inertia and the other
In an actual multimachine power system, multiple electrome- area having lower inertia. Therefore, H1 is much higher than H2 .
chanical oscillatory modes are expected. However, in reality The two areas are separated by a large distance. The eigenvalue
there will a few critical modes, which are of interest to the system sensitivity is analyzed at two different locations in the system.
operator. Thus, the complexity in analysis is greatly reduced by The first one is at the COI location and the second one is at
focussing on those few critical interarea modes of the system. In low inertia area. Since H1 is much higher compared to H2 the
this section, an attempt to analyze the impact of change in IDI COI location will be close to bus 1, and hence, the term H2 is
on mode characteristics is carried out. neglected in (14). The modified equation for COI will become
Two machine model, as shown in Fig. 1, is used for the
E1
calculation of COI location and eigenvalue sensitivity analysis. α∗ = (18)
The SG and synchronous motor connected to bus 1 and bus 5 E1 + E2 H1
are represented by the classical model. E  is the terminal voltage 1

and Xd is the d-axis transient reactance of both the machines. A = E2 H1
. (19)
1+ E1
general bus (bus 3) is represented for referencing purposes. α is

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4 IEEE SYSTEMS JOURNAL

Fig. 2. Single line diagram of NRPG system corresponding to case I grouping.

Eigenvalue sensitivity at the COI location is derived and is The system has a total generating capacity of 26652.1 MVA. The
given by topology single line diagram of the base case system is shown
 in Fig. 2. The test system is modeled using dynamic security
 E1 E2
∂λα j    ω s V 0 H1 + H2 assessment tool (DSA tools) power system simulator [26]. The
|α=α∗ = (E1 − E2 )   .
∂α 2 2X H1 H2 E2 H1 +E1 H2 3 IDI index is obtained for the NRPG system considering different
E1 +E2 H1
test scenarios as detailed in the following.
(20)
1) Case I: Base case scenario where all the generators are
The next location considered to find out eigenvalue sensitivity
synchronous machines.
is the farthest location from COI, which is at a distance of αmax
2) Case II: Generators at bus 1, 24, 36, and two of the three
from bus 1. This location is having low inertia. Considering the
generators at bus 38 are replaced with type IV wind turbine
distance between two areas, αmax can be approximated to 1.
generator (WTG). Second generation Western Electricity
Therefore the eigenvalue sensitivity at this location becomes
 Coordinating Council (WECC) models are used to repre-
∂λα j  ωs V0 H1 + H2 E1 E2 sent WTG. In this case, the group 1 generators of case I

|α=αmax = (E1 − E2 ) . (21) scenario are replaced with type IV WTG.
∂α 2 2X H1 H2 (E2 )3
3) Case III: Generators at bus 19, 20, 21, and 37 are replaced
Comparing both (20) and (21), the authors could infer that with type IV WTG. In this case, SG in group 6 of case I
sensitivity is high at the region having higher IDI compared to the is replaced by type IV WTG.
region having lower IDI. The simulation results demonstrated Initially, the IDI is obtained for case I and the geographical
in Section V validate the above-mentioned conclusion. representation of the groups of NRPG system based on proposed
COP-based IDI is shown in Fig. 3. The system is divided into
IV. CASE STUDY USING TEST SYSTEM DATA six groups based on IDI. It is to be noted that buses belonging to
group 1 are the ones with the least IDI. That means these buses
A. Evaluation on Indian Power Systems are closest to the COI location. On the other hand, buses that are
The suggested COP-based IDI scheme is validated on the part of group 6 are the ones with the highest IDI. That means
Northern Regional Power Grid (NRPG) of the Indian power this is the farthest region from the COI. Group 6 covers the state
system. It is the largest among all regional power grids and of Rajasthan and it is the least meshed group whereas group
consists of 246 buses, 376 lines, and 43 exciters. The network 1 is the most meshed group of the NRPG system. Similarly,
and dynamic data of the NRPG system can be referred from [25]. the IDI is obtained for case II scenario of the NRPG system

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K AND JENA: PRACTICAL APPROACH TO IDM AND IMPACT OF INERTIA DISTRIBUTION ON OBS FOR RENEWABLE PENETRATED POWER GRID 5

Fig. 3. Geographical representation of groups of NRPG system based on IDI Fig. 5. Geographical representation of groups of NRPG system based on IDI
index with all synchronous machines (case I). index with type IV WTG models at group 6 of basecase (case III).

Fig. 6. Frequency deviation at bus 1 following a generation loss contingency.

Fig. 4. Geographical representation of groups of NRPG system based on IDI
index with type IV WTG models at group 1 of basecase (case II).
and the geographical representation of different groups of the
NRPG system is shown in Fig. 4. Fig. 5 shows the geographical
representation of the groups in NRPG system for case III. The
COI location as well as the groups have changed in both cases.
Readers may visualize the impact of RES penetration on IDI. We
notice that the generation mix does affect the IDI and real-time
information of IDI will assist the system operator in real-time
operation of the power system. A plot of frequency deviation
at bus 1 following a generator tripping contingency is shown in
Fig. 6. All three test scenarios are considered while monitoring
the frequency deviation at bus 1. Readers may note that bus
1 belongs to group 1, group 2, and group 4 for case I, case
II, and case III test scenarios, respectively. That means bus 1
is the bus closest (group 1) to the COI location as far as case
I is concerned. However, the distance of bus 1 from the COI
location is increased if we move from case I to case II and case
III. Thus, it is expected that bus 1 frequency deviation following
a particular contingency will be more in case III compared to
the frequency deviation obtained in case I and case II. Fig. 6
confirms the above-mentioned observation. Further, deviation
in the frequency and phase angle observed at a bus following a
contingency depends on its IDI. The bus frequency and phase
angle deviation is minimum for buses closest to the COI and it
will be maximum for buses farthest from the COI. To verify this,

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6 IEEE SYSTEMS JOURNAL
Fig. 7. Frequency deviation for case I.
Fig. 8. Frequency deviation for case II.
a generation loss contingency is created for both case I and case
II scenarios of the NRPG system using the Transient Security
Assessment Tool module of the DSA tools. The frequency
deviation is monitored at bus 36 (group 1) and bus 19 (group
6) of the NRPG system, as shown in Figs. 7 and 8. It is observed
that bus 36 is having least frequency deviation following the
contingency as compared to bus 19 and these results validate the
IDI obtained for the NRPG system using the proposed technique.
B. Real-Time IDI Monitoring
Power system inertial response resist change in frequency
following any contingency and provides time for other control
systems to respond in case of supply and demand imbalance.
The stored kinetic energy of the SG contributes toward inertial
response. Thus, at a given instant of time, the amount of inertial
response available for a power system is primarily dependant on
the number of synchronous machines, which are operational.
However, during real-time operation, the power contribution
from conventional SG-based resources may vary with system
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Fig. 9. Real-time monitoring framework.
Fig. 10. Real-time IDI calculated at bus 159.
conditions and it results in variation of IDI. Therefore, IDI is to
be considered as a time-varying quantity. Real-time monitoring
of IDI will provide the operator with better information of inertia
available at each instant. It, therefore, helps for scheduling gen-
eration more efficiently with minimal risk of cascaded tripping.
Thus, we have extended the work by introducing Algorithm 1
for real-time IDI monitoring. For this calculation active power,
generator frequency, and bus frequency are taken into consider-
ation. The objective of this downstream application is to enable
the operator to monitor the real-time trend of IDI at any bus
of interest. The framework for real-time monitoring of IDI is
shown in Fig. 9. PMUs will stream the required measurements
to control room where the IDI monitoring algorithm is executed.
A moving window is shifted by one sample after each iteration.
The objective is to provide the real-time trend of IDI along with
information on COP location and group formulation based on
IDI. A test case is considered for demonstration purposes. The
reference power setting of the renewable generator at bus 24
is increased at 180 s. The variation in IDI at bus 159 is shown
in Fig. 10. Bus 159 is located at group 1, which is the nearest
group to COP. For normal operating conditions, the IDI of this
bus is close to zero. When the renewable generation increases,
the active power supplied by the SG reduces automatically to
maintain generation-load balance. There will be a shift in COP
to the area where more SG are located. Therefore, the IDI at bus
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K AND JENA: PRACTICAL APPROACH TO IDM AND IMPACT OF INERTIA DISTRIBUTION ON OBS FOR RENEWABLE PENETRATED POWER GRID
Algorithm 1: Real-Time IDI Calculation.
1: Input: Generator active power, generator frequency,
bus frequency.
2: Calculate COP of the samples in the selected window
using (8).
3: Compute the distance of each bus from COP using (9).
4: Compute IDI by dividing with maximum distance
using (10).
5: Output: IDI of all buses.
6: Update the window by removing last sample and add
next sample.
7: Repeat steps 3 to 6.
159 will increase. After contingency, the SG are slowly picking
up to their scheduled generation, which results in the reduction
of IDI at bus 159.
C. Impact of Noise and Data Loss
The presence of noise and loss of data for a particular time
period may affect the calculation of IDI. These two cases are
discussed in this section as follows.
1) Impact of Noise: It is observed that PMU measurements
corresponding to transmission systems are found to be Gaus-
sian with mean zero and signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) of around
45 dB [27]. Thus, authors have included white Gaussian noise
of SNR = 45 dB to the measurements utilized for the com-
putation of IDI. It is observed that presence of noise affects
the IDI-based grouping of buses. However, the grouping of
buses is least affected if a wavelet transform-based denoising
function is embedded within the IDI monitoring algorithm. It
is to be noted that such denoising functions are part of data
preprocessing module of most of the available power system
monitoring software solutions [28].
2) Impact of Data Loss: IDI cannot be accurately calculated
in case of data loss. Therefore, an algorithm to check data loss
has to be incorporated to this method. For a window length,
a minimum number of data points should be specified in the
following, which the IDI monitoring algorithm will not be
processed [6], [29].
Some of the WAMS-based monitoring softwares, such as GE
phasorpoint [6] have algorithm to check the packet loss of data.
Even though this algorithm is not included in this manuscript, it
can be incorporated when the algorithm is implemented in the
actual system.
D. Impact on OBS
OSM is one of the most popular control room use cases where
PMU measurements are utilized in real time to access oscillatory
stability of the system [6]. OSM application needs triggering
thresholds to provide “Alert” and “Alarm” signals to the operator.
The triggering thresholds should detect any high-energy poorly
damped oscillation and at the same time, they should avoid
providing false alarms to the operator. To achieve this target,
OBS is performed to find out reliable triggering thresholds
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7
Fig. 11. Histogram plot for NRPG system.
for the mode frequencies. OBS is part of most of the offline
engineering analysis software solutions, such as phasoranalytics
from general electric (GE) [30]. Most of the utilities opt for OBS
every 4–5 years in order to set reliable triggering thresholds for
the oscillatory modes. With high penetration of RES oscillatory
modes of the system may vary depending upon the percentage
generation as well as the location of RES. Predefined triggering
threshold cannot guarantee reliable operation in such cases.
Therefore, an attempt has been made to analyze the impact of
IDI on OBS. The following steps are followed in the OBS [31].
1) Step 1: Reviewing long term oscillations.
2) Step 2: Identify subbands.
3) Step 3: Threshold selection using statistical results.
In the first step, long-term oscillations are analyzed using
months of historian data. The outcome of the first step is a
histogram plot, which details the modes of oscillation present in
a power system and the number of occurrences of such modes.
Fig. 11 shows a typical example of histogram plot for the NRPG
system. Considering 0.76 Hz critical oscillatory mode a subband
with a lower cutoff frequency of 0.75 Hz and a higher cutoff
frequency of 0.77 Hz is selected based on histogram results.
Usually “Alert” and “Alarm” thresholds are subband specific.
However, the current study investigated the impact of change in
IDI on the mode frequency and its damping and it is observed
that change of IDI may result in shifting of oscillatory modes
from one subband to another. In that case, the “Alert” and
“Alarm” thresholds need to be updated. In order to demonstrate
the impact of IDI on the OBS, small-signal stability analysis
is performed on the test system including all the test scenarios,
as detailed in the previous section. The small-signal stability
study on the base case provided information related to the most
critical interarea oscillatory mode of the NRPG system. This
interarea oscillatory mode is having a frequency of oscillation
of 0.71 Hz with 4.52% damping. When small signal-stability
analysis is performed on test case II and test case III, the impact
of RES penetration is clearly observed on both the frequency of
oscillation and damping ratio of the critical oscillatory mode of
the system. Readers may visualize the relative impact of change
in IDI on the mode frequency and its corresponding damping.
When generators placed near COI are replaced with WTG, it
results in a slight increase of mode frequency and its corre-
sponding damping of the critical oscillatory mode. However,
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8 IEEE SYSTEMS JOURNAL

TABLE I TABLE III

SMALL SIGNAL STABILITY ANALYSIS RESULTS FOR CASE I, CASE II, AND COMPARISON OF THE PROPOSED WORK WITH RELATED WORKS
CASE III

TABLE II
PRONY ANALYSIS RESULT FOR CASE I, CASE II, AND CASE III

when generators of group 6 are replaced with WTG, it results

in a decrease in both oscillation frequency and damping of the
critical oscillatory mode. The results are depicted in Table I.
The results from the simulation are in arrangement with the
analysis done using derived (20) and (21). The relative change
in magnitude is high in case III compared to case II.
We extended this analysis further by initiating a load shedding
contingency at bus 40 of the NRPG system and prony analysis is
performed on the postcontingency signal to observe the impact
of change in IDI on the critical oscillatory mode. The results of
prony analysis are detailed in Table II. In this case too the ob-
servations are similar to those of small signal stability analysis.
Usually, operators go for OBS every 4–5 years. However, this
study demonstrates that the triggering thresholds for OSM need
to be updated in near real-time depending on the generation mix
of a particular power system.
E. Qualitative Comparison With Other Related Works
A qualitative comparison is carried out with the existing
schemes for IDI calculation and the suggested scheme. The
comparison result is shown in Table III. Four parameters are
taken into consideration as follows.
1) Data inputs considered.
2) Dependency on state variables/inertia.
3) Model based/ measurement based.
4) Suitability for online application.
For the existing schemes as well as the proposed scheme, the
number of inputs involved in the calculation is three. It means
that the proposed scheme does not require any extra inputs. It
is to be highlighted that the proposed scheme uses active power
as one of the inputs instead of inertia, which is used in existing
schemes, such as [19], [32], [33]. In [21], a model-based method
is used for IDI calculation, which needs generator state variables
as inputs. The active power measurements from PMUs are easily
available in the control room whereas real-time inertia data or
the generator state variables are usually not reported by PMUs.
For this reason, the proposed scheme is highly suitable for online
applications compared to other schemes.
Further, the analytical expressions for the eigenvalue sensitiv-
ity with respect to IDI is explored and verified with the full-order
phasor-domain simulations and modal analysis carried out on
the NRPG system. To the best of our knowledge, an attempt has
been made to explore the impact of change in IDI on OBS for
the first time in this manuscript.
V. SALIENT FEATURES OF THE PROPOSED METHOD
The unique features of the proposed method for IDI monitor-
ing are mentioned in the following.
1) The proposed method of IDI calculation is based on COP
reference and hence is dependent only on PMU measure-
ments.
2) The impact of inertia distribution on OBS is explored,
and the inferences drawn are verified using analytical
equations, time-domain simulations as well as small sig-
nal stability analysis. To the best of our knowledge, this
relationship is explored for the first time in literature.
3) We proposed a method for real-time IDI monitoring. The
suggested method is highly suitable for online applications
as the calculation depends only on PMU measurements.
4) The scheme proposed in this article can be integrated into
existing state-of-the-art software solutions, such as GE
phasorpoint [30] and RTDMS [34].
VI. CONCLUSION
The concept of COP-based IDI is proposed. The suggested
IDI monitoring scheme uses PMU measurements. The IDI is
evaluated on NRPG system of India and the impact of different
penetration of RES on IDI is explored. Time-domain simulation
is performed to validate the results obtained through suggested
COP-based IDI monitoring scheme. Furthermore, the impact
of change in IDI on the OBS is explored and it is concluded
that in the future power system operators may need to update
the triggering thresholds for OSM in near real time. Further, a
technique to monitor COP and IDI in real time is also proposed.
The suggested IDI monitoring scheme can be integrated into
state-of-the-art control room software solutions. The future work

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 This article has been accepted for inclusion in a future issue of this journal. Content is final as presented, with the exception of pagination.
K AND JENA: PRACTICAL APPROACH TO IDM AND IMPACT OF INERTIA DISTRIBUTION ON OBS FOR RENEWABLE PENETRATED POWER GRID
will focus on the development of a day ahead IDI forecasting
scheme. Further, an extensive study considering the synthetic
inertia of renewable generators and inertia contribution from
loads will be carried out in future.
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Gayathri K (Student Member, IEEE) received the
B.Tech. degree in electrical and electronics engineer-
ing from Government Engineering College, Thrissur,
India, in 2018. She is currently working toward the
Ph.D. degree in electrical engineering from the Indian
Institute of Technology Palakkad, Palakkad, India.
Her research interests include power system dy-
namics and power system monitoring.
Manas Kumar Jena (Senior Member, IEEE) re-
ceived the Ph.D. degree in power systems engineering
from the Indian Institute of Technology Delhi, New,
Delhi, India, in 2018.
He is currently an Assistant Professor with the
department of Electrical Engineering, Indian Institute
of Technology Palakkad, Palakkad, India. Prior to
joining IIT Palakkad, he was a Subject Matter Expert
with GE-Power. His research interests include wide
area monitoring system, wide area protection, im-
proving wide area situational awareness using PMU
information, application of signal processing, and data-mining in power systems.
Dr. Jena was a recipient of the Indian National Academy of Engineers (INAE)
Innovative Student Projects Award 2018—Doctoral Level, POSOCO Power
System Award (PPSA)-2019, and GE-Impact Award-2019 for the development
and delivery of PhasorAnalytics Software Solution to ONS-Brazil, and Indian
National Academy of Engineers (INAE) Young Engineer Award 2021.