Machine Learning of Factors Influencing Damping
and Frequency of Dominant Inter-area Modes in the
WECC Interconnect
Zhangshuan Hou, Jim Follum, Pavel Etingov, and Francis Tuffner
Pacific Northwest National Laboratory
Richland, Washington, USA
Email: Zhangshuan.Hou@pnnl.gov, James.Follum@pnnl.gov
Abstract—The stability of inter-area electromechanical os-
cillations are critical to power system reliability. Due to the
complexities of power systems, relationships between system
conditions and oscillation characteristics, such as damping and
frequency, tend to be expressed only in generalities. In this study,
a list of influential factors on Western Electricity Coordinating
Council interconnect modal characteristics are identified and
evaluated with advanced machine learning techniques including
principal component analysis, analysis of variance, classification
and regression trees, and support vector machine approaches.
The predictive relationships between the influential factors and
modal characteristics could be used in the future to develop
alert thresholds earlier than measurement-based mode estimation
approaches.
Index Terms: Electromechanical modes, machine learning,
principal component analysis, analysis of variance, classification
and regression trees, support vector machine
I. I NTRODUCTION
The stability of electromechanical oscillations in power sys-
tems is a critical concern and a prerequisite for secure system
operation [1]. A system’s modes dictate the periodic exchanges
of energy between groups of generators in disparate parts of
the system. They are often characterized with by frequency
and damping ratio terms. If a mode becomes unstable, i.e., its
damping ratio becomes negative, the resulting oscillations in
power and synchronous frequency will continue to grow until
protective actions are taken. The result can be catastrophic,
as evidenced by the 1996 breakup of the Western Electricity
Coordinating Council (WECC) system, where 7.49 million
customers were affected by the loss of 30,930 MW of load
[1].
Methods of analyzing electromechanical modes can typ-
ically be categorized as model- or measurement-based ap-
proaches. Model-based approaches provide useful insight as
long as the model is accurate, but due to the size and
complexity of power systems, the required accuracy can be
The Pacific Northwest National Laboratory is operated for the U.S. De-
partment of Energy by Battelle Memorial Institute under Contract DE-AC05-
76RL01830.
This work was funded by the U.S. DOE through the Grid Modernization
Lab Consortium and through Bonneville Power Administration’s Technology
Innovation program.
2018,
c Battelle Memorial Institute
Dmitry Kosterev and Gordon Matthews
Bonneville Power Administration
Portland, Oregon, USA
difficult to attain, leading to differences between modeled and
observed system behavior. The 1996 breakup of the WECC
serves as a dramatic example of this type of mismatch [1].
To address this challenge, significant effort has been in-
vested to complement model-based approaches with methods
based on Phasor Measurement Unit (PMU) data [5]–[9]. Such
methods apply advanced signal processing techniques to ex-
tract information about the system’s modes from data collected
immediately after system events or during ambient conditions
when the system’s dynamics are continuously excited by
random load changes. The methods applicable during ambient
conditions are particularly useful for ongoing monitoring of
the system’s stability. Still, the methods tend to rely on long
record lengths to provide accurate estimates. As a result, even
when modes are monitored in the online environment there is
a delay before estimates reflect changes in the modes [9].
Studies that seek to systematically understand the mecha-
nisms and factors that influence the modes help address this
challenge [10]–[13]. For example, if poor damping is found
to coincide with a particular set of power flows, the system
can be operated in a way that avoids such system conditions.
Because real-time information about power flows is available
via PMUs, adjustments could be made faster than relying
exclusively on mode estimates based on long record lengths
of ambient data.
In this study, we adopt a data-centric approach to eval-
uate the impacts of system conditions on the damping and
frequency of the interconnect modes. A system model is
used in this initial study to prove the concept, but similar
approaches could be applied with measured power system
data. The system condition is characterized with a set of
voltage angle pairs, generator outputs, and line flows. The term
angle pair refers to the difference between two voltage angles
at different buses, typically separated by several transmission
lines. Because all of these parameters can be updated in real-
time using PMU data, their evaluation serves as a complement
to algorithms that directly estimate the modes from the past
several minutes of data. The parameters are analyzed using
various machine learning (ML) techniques for feature selection
and variable ranking [14].
PMAPS 2018
 ML techniques, such as cross-correlation, principal compo-
nent analysis (PCA), and analysis of variance (ANOVA) are
typical approaches for feature selection [14], [15]. To better
characterize the non-linear relationships among the multiple
variables, people have adopted more advanced techniques such
as decision-tree (DT) and support vector machines (SVM)
techniques [22]. These analyses are usually integrated to
achieve a comprehensive set of critical features; however, such
integrated analyses are absent for power system oscillation
problems.
In this study, we focused on using these advanced learning
techniques to establish a comprehensive set of influential
factors on interconnect modal frequency and damping, and
identifying the most appropriate predictive models to facilitate
modal frequency and damping predictions.
II. M ETHODOLOGY
Disturbance datasets were generated based on a full-scale
WECC model using General Electric’s Positive Sequence Load
Flow (PSLF) tool. The simulations were performed for 125
different sets of system conditions, including diverse genera-
tion patterns and planned transmission outages. Oscillations
were induced by inserting a 1400 MW dynamic braking
resistor [17] at its true location within the system, and at
a second bus where the mode of interest was known to be
excitable. Analysis of post-disturbance ringdown responses
were conducted using Prony analysis [5], [18] for estimating
the system modes. WECC has greatly advanced its under-
standing of the inter-area modes of power oscillations in
the Western Interconnection [19]. Damping and frequency
attributes were estimated for the following WECC modes:
Montana-Northwest, North-South A, North-South B, British
Columbia, and East-West. This paper focuses on the Montana-
Northwest (MT) oscillation mode.
After applying Prony analysis, the relationships between
mode estimates and system conditions were evaluated. The
system conditions were characterized by a set of 19 variables
associated with five voltage angle pairs, active power outputs
of six generation sites, and active power flow along four
transmission lines and four transmission paths (several lines
summed together). Geographical locations are depicted in Fig.
1. Note that G3, G4, G5, and G6 are units within the same
plant.
In some cases, it was important to represent a component’s
status (in or out of service) and the amount of power flowing
or being generated. This was accomplished by using two
variables: one for the status and the other for the amount of
power. Where power appeared in discrete levels across the
simulations, categorical variables were used. This approach
prevented the analysis methods from assigning undue weight
to minor changes within a level.
In order to understand the relationships between the modal
attributes and the system conditions, various ML approaches
were applied. Paired cross-correlations
E [(X − µX ) (Y − µY )]
ρ(X, Y ) = (1)
σX σY
Fig. 1. Schematic of angle pairs (lines), generation sites (G), and transmission
lines/paths (arrows) associated with the MT mode.
were first computed, resulting in a (21 × 21) cross-correlation
matrix as a measure of similarities among the 19 factors and
the two modal attributes. Elements within the matrix range
from -1 to 1, which gives the strength of the relationships. A
value of zero indicates that there is no relationship between a
pair of variables, while a value near unity indicates a nearly
perfect positive correspondence between the pair.
Another unsupervised approach, PCA, was then used to
target linear correspondence among the variables. PCA is an
orthogonal linear transformation that transforms the data to
a new coordinate system, such that the greatest variance by
some projection of the data lies on the first coordinate (i.e.,
the first principal component), the second greatest variance
on the second coordinate, and so on. Mathematically, the
transformation is defined by a set of p-dimensional vectors
of weights or loadings w(k) = (w1 , . . . , wp )(k) that map each
row vector x(i) of X to a new vector of principal component
scores t(i) = (t1 , . . . , tm )(i) , given by tk(i) = x(i) · w(k) , for
i = 1, . . . , n, k = 1, . . . , m. The new t vector inherits the
maximum possible variance from x, with each loading vector
w constrained to be a unit vector. Therefore, PCA converts
the set of observations with possible correlations into a set of
values of linearly uncorrelated principal components such that
the most variance lies on the first several coordinates [20].
ANOVA was then applied to express a dependent variable
(e.g., modal damping or frequency) as a linear combination
of other features or measurements. It partitions the observed
variance of a dependent variable into components attributable
to different sources of variation. ANOVA is a special case of
general linear model, formulated as
Y = Xβ + , (2)
where coefficients β can be estimated with maximum like-
lihood or Bayesian techniques. Xβ are the fitted values of
observations Y. The resulting model is then used to compute
variance contributions from each predictor (a column of X)
[15].
In practice, the relationships among the dependent and
independent variables might be non-linear. For the modal
analyses in this study, two approaches were used to study
the potential non-linearity in the cross-dependence of data.
Classification and regression trees (CART) is an example of
a DT and is adopted in the study [21]. It is formed by a
collection of rules to achieve the best split to differentiate
damping/frequency observations with respect to the dependent
variables, and the splitting is done recursively for each child
node until no further gain can be made. Mathematically, CART
tries to minimize
ΣN M 2
i=1 [yi − Σm=1 cm I(x ∈ Rm )] , (3)
with M the number of subregions Rm of the input variable
space, and cm the estimated values of the output y in each
subregion.
The above feature selection studies were integated to yield
a short list of influential factors, which were used to develop
nonlinear predictive models using SVM [22]. SVM regression
maps the input variables into high-dimensional feature spaces
via non-linear kernel transformations, then a linear model is
constructed in this feature space in the form of
f (x, w) = Σm
j=1 wj gj (x) + , (4)
where gj (x), j = 1, . . . , m denotes a set of nonlinear trans- Fig. 2. Cross-correlation of the data matrix with distance-based clustering.
formations (e.g., radial basis function), and  is the bias Absolute values are shown as we are interested in the correlation strength.
White color represents a correlation of 1.0 and dark green represents 0. Factors
term. SVM regression has an advantage by utilizing the between 0 and 1.0 are on a linear scale, from dark green to orange to yellow
regularization term in the cost function to avoid over-fitting. to white.
The predictive models were multi-fold validated by dividing
the datasets randomly into training and testing subsets. Leave-
one-out validation tests were also performed. The goodness
of fit (e.g., the root mean squared errors) for the training and
testing sets are expected be comparably low in the finalized
models.
III. R ESULTS
To aid in the discussion of results, the following nomen-
clature for the variables in Fig. 1 has been adopted. The
difference in voltage angle between points i and k is denoted
as APi,k . Active power generation at site i is denoted as Gi,
while active power flow along transmission lines and paths
is denoted as T i and P i, respectively. Asterisks are used
to indicate parameters related to a line or generator’s status
(in or out of service). Estimates of the damping ratio and
frequency of the Montana-Northwest mode are denoted as
M T.D and M T.F , respectively. It is a long list of factors;
feature selection with shortened parameter/factor list enables
ML algorithms to train faster, reduces the complexity of the
models, makes them easier to interpret, and reduces overfitting.
A comprehensive set of unsupervised and supervised ML
Fig. 3. PCA biplot of the data matrix. The scores of all system conditions
techniques were adopted and integrated to help quantify the (black dots) and the projections of all variables (red arrows) are shown with
complex relationships among the high-dimensional factors and respect to the first two principal components.
modal attributes. Cross-correlation analysis of the complete
data matrix shows that voltage angle pairs (e.g., AP1,5 , AP1,4 ,
and AP2,5 ) are among the most correlated to both frequency properties and all the factors; Fig. 3 shows that with respect
(MT.F) and damping (MT.D) of the MT mode, followed by a to the first two principal components, several angle pairs (e.g.,
few other power flows and voltage angle pairs, as shown in Fig. AP1,4 ) and active power generation (e.g., G5) align well with
2, where the most influential factors are generally grouped next MT.D and MT.F.
to MT.F and MT.D, respectively. These findings are supported The factor contributions were quantified via ANOVA with
by PCA which helps visualize the similarities among modal generalized linear model fitting (see Equation 2) and a back-
Fig. 4. Scatter plots of damping against a selection of the influential Fig. 5. Scatter plots of frequency against a selection of the influential
factors. The bottom-right panel shows the goodness of fit (i.e., the damping factors. The bottom-right panel shows the goodness of fit (i.e., the frequency
observations vs the fitted values of damping with the influential condition observations vs the fitted values of frequency with the influential condition
parameters using the generalized linear model for damping). parameters using the generalized linear model for frequency).

TABLE I
T HE RELATIVE CONTRIBUTIONS OF THE IMPORTANT FACTORS TO MT
ward removal approach. The model was fitted with the system MODAL DAMPING AND FREQUENCY ACCORDING TO ANOVA BACKWARD
condition factors including the in and out of service indicators, REMOVAL .
and each trivial factor was eliminated one by one using the
backward removal approach based on the Akaike informa- Damping Frequency
tion criteria (AIC, [23]). The finalized model contains only Factor Contribution Factor Contribution
the influential factors with relatively significant contributions. T 1∗ 15.9% AP1,4 19.9%
Among all the system condition parameters, 12 are considered AP1,5 13.8% AP2,5 19.8%
to be significant for damping and 13 for frequency variations. G1 11.1% G4∗ 13.1%
A selection of scatters are plotted in Figs. 4 and 5, which AP1,4 10.9% G4 11.9%
illustrate either positve, negative, or nonlinear relationships G5 10.6% G1 6.9%
between the system conditions and modal properties. The G6 9.5% T 4∗ 6.8%
contributions of all significant parameters are provided nu- G6∗ 7.7% T 1∗ 5.9%
merically in Table I and geographically in Fig. 6. There are P4 6.8% G5∗ 5.0%
negligible linear or nonlinear patterns in the scatters between P3 5.0% G6∗ 4.7%
the trivial factors and modal properties. Figs. 4 and 5 show G2 3.4% T4 3.1%
that a subset of the system condition parameters can linearly T 2∗ 2.9% G3 1.1%
explain up to 38% and 50% (i.e., R2 ) of the variability of G3 2.4% G3∗ 1.1%
modal damping and frequency, respectively. Here R2 (i.e., R- T 2∗ 0.7%
squared) = explained variation / total variation, is a statistical
measure of how close the data are to the fitted regression
line, and is also known as the coefficient of determination. AP1,5 voltage angle pairs is considered to be the dominant
The adjusted R2 was also calculated, which is equal to factor, according to CART. Regression using SVM yields
1 − (1 − R2 ) ∗ (n − 1)/(n − p − 1), where n is the sample size quantitative nonlinear relationships between the influential
and p is the number of explanatory variables. The formula is factors and modal attributes, by integrating nonlinear kernel
to penalize a big model having extra terms. Here, the adjusted functions (e.g., radial basis functions). Validation tests show
R2 are 0.31 and 0.46, respectively. that reasonable surrogate models can be developed using
The performance of the linear models is satisfactory, but SVM, and that the R2 can be improved to 0.76 and 0.75 (see
can be potentially improved given the presence of nonlinear Fig. 8), with the adjusted R2 0.75 and 0.74, respectively, much
correspondence between several system condition parameters higher than achieved using generalized linear model fitting.
and modal properties (e.g., AP2,5 and MT frequency), and the Such an accurate predictive model can be used to develop alert
idea is to integrate nonlinear relationships (e.g., using CART thresholds earlier than mode-estimation-based approaches.
or SVM models) to achieve higher goodness of fit. CART-
based parameter ranking for MT modal damping is shown in IV. C ONCLUSION
Fig. 7. It generally agrees with the ANOVA results, except that In this study, we applied multiple feature selection ap-
it represents more of the nonlinear relationship, and therefore proaches to identify the most influential factors (system condi-
the ranks of the factors are slightly different. For example, the tions and equipment status) on the damping and frequency of

Fig. 6. Relative importance of angle pairs, generation sites, and transmission
lines/paths associated with the damping (top) and frequency (bottom) of the
MT mode.
Fig. 7. CART ranking of the most influential parameters/factors. The relative
importance scores of all parameters add up to 1, and the dominant parameters
are shown in red.
Fig. 8. SVM goodness of fit for MT modal damping and frequency.
the Montana-Northwest mode in the Western Interconnection.
The approaches were integrated to improve confidence on the
resulting short list of the most important factors. Several volt-
age angle pairs and units at a generation site were identified
as the key factors. These factors can be monitored in real
time. Pairing with mode estimates, which are usually delayed,
will improve situational alerts. A set of alert thresholds can be
developed dependent on system conditions and mode estimates
with the SVM models developed in the study.
In future work, the methods presented here will be incorpo-
rated in the Oscillation Baselining and Analysis Tool (OBAT)
within the open-source suite for advanced synchrophasor anal-
ysis discussed in [24], allowing them to be applied to measured
data. The methods will also be extended to mode estimates
from ambient data for a more comprehensive analysis and
comparison of ambient and event signals.
Bonneville Power Administration developed a Mode Me-
ter application that has been deployed in its control room
since 2013 [25]. The application uses ambient oscillations
to estimate damping and frequency of inter-area oscillations,
including the MontanaNorthwest mode. The application is
currently in a monitoring mode. This work will help BPA to
develop alarming thresholds and to operationalize the Mode
Meter application.
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