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Study on Wide Area Measurement System based
Transient Stability Control for Power System
F. F. Song, T.S. Bi, Member, IEEE, and Q.X. Yang
Abstract--In this paper, the state of the arts of power systems
in China and some applications in transient stability control
based on wide area measurement system (WAMS) are introduced
briefly. With the development of power grid interconnection and
transmission utility deregulation, the operation of electric power
system become more and more complex, which challenges the
security and transient stability control of power systems. The
advent of WAMS opens a new path to the system trajectory
prediction and real time closed-loop stability control to prevent
power system outage. The defects of current transient stability
control system are analyzed, then a possible scheme of transient
stability control based on WAMS is proposed, and the
corresponding future work is put forward as well. Finally, a new
way of solving cascading events is discussed.
Index Terms--Transient stability, control, wide area
measurement system, power systems.
I. INTRODUCTION
O peration of electric power system becomes more and
more complex and brings challenges to the security since
grid has been in a era of bulk power system in the world.
So many new components such as HVDC, power electronic
devices and distributed generators have been commissioned in
the power grid. In China, up to 2020, the generation capacity
of Chinese power grid will be 900 million kW and the power
grid will possess more than 20 high voltage DC lines. Besides,
the power transmitted from west to east will be over 100
million kW. Meanwhile, under the deregulated market
conditions, the transmission utilities are finding it more
difficult to upgrade the transmission systems as in the past and
unable to keep up with the growing loads and the added
generation. The customers try to buy cheaper electricity which
might be generated in a remote area and make the
transmission distance longer and transmission network more
complex. The super-grid has also become so venerable that the
events in one area can cascade and have significant impact on
the remote areas. All these changes are putting pressure for the
development of new tools to monitor and analyze system
operation and take measures to realize transient stability
control if necessary.
Wide area measurement system (WAMS) opens a new path
to power system stability analysis and control. The snapshot of
the system dynamic behavior can be obtained and updated
every 20 ms by WAMS, i.e. the historical data of phasors are
F.F. Song, T.S. Bi and Q.X. Yang are all with Si Fang Research Institute,
North China Electric Power University; Key Laboratory of Power System
Protection and Dynamic Security Monitoring and Control (North China
Electric Power University), Ministry of Education; Beijing 102206, P.R.
China (e-mail: songfangfang4291@sina.com, tsbi@ncepubj.edu.cn, and
yangqixun@sf-auto.com).
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available. Up to now, over 50 PMUs have been equipped in
Chinese power systems. From 2002, real time monitoring
systems based on PMU have been established in succession in
the power systems of South China, West China, East China,
Sichuan Province, three-gorge (left bank), north China and
northeast China. Now, a new information platform is
generated, which consists of WAMS, EMS/SCADA,
information of protection system, data of stability control
system and part of prior off-line knowledge. This makes it
possible to predict the system trajectories and realize real time
closed-loop stability control to prevent power system
blackout.
In this paper the state of the arts of power system transient
stability control is introduced briefly, and some defects of
current power grid control are described in detail in section 2.
Section 3 proposes a possible scheme of transient stability
control and indicates that the design may improve power
transmission limit and avoid operator misoperation. Finally
some discussions on cascading events are given.
II. THE OVERVIEW OF CURRENT STABILITY CONTROL IN
POWER SYSTEMS
The existing emergency stability control devices are
distributed in some venerable sites. These sites are chosen by
prior off-line computation based on N-1 stability analysis.
They are inter-independent and entirely serve for the local site.
Then a strategy table for stability control under potential
contingencies is worked out by off-line simulation.
Once there is a disturbance, the first step is to identify the
stability of the system. When the system might be unstable,
the control devices start searching the control strategy table
based on the operation mode of pre-fault power system and
the disturbance. Then they find the corresponding control
measures and quantities, which will be executed quickly to
prevent blackout. But there are two problems: one is that
because the operation modes and power network topologies
are time-varying and thus the strategy table cannot cover all
the contingency cases. The other is that because the strategy
table is established by simulating computation, which is
dependent on models and parameters of power systems. But
the accurate models and parameters of power system are hard
to achieve. For example the outage of America cannot be
recurred by simulation computing based on original models
and parameters in 1996 [1].
Therefore, the operation limit is conservative in the current
state. The local control devices and system control center
(EMS) are disjunct. The local control devices cannot globally

control system by using local information. Besides, the quick
local control and slow center control are not coordinate. The
existing stability control system is helpless to the cascading
event which occurs in many outages as shown in Fig. 1-3.
Fig. 1. A fault occurs on line 2
Fig. 2. The relay of line2 trips the corresponding breakers
Fig. 3. System B is collapsing
The whole system consists of the subsystems A, B and C.
Subsystem A and C supply power to subsystem B. There is
one tie-line named Line 1 as shown in Fig.1 between system A
and B and two tie-lines named Line 2 and Line 3 between
system B and C. At first, there is a fault occurs on Line 2
which may be the result of a branch of the tree reaching the
Line 2. Then the relay of Line2 trips the corresponding
breakers, which leads to the power flow of Line 2 transferring
to Line 1 and Line 3. After a time-delay, the overload relays of
Line 1 and Line 3 act and trip the corresponding breakers in
Line 1 and Line 3. Finally, the system B is isolated. A
blackout will occur in system B, if there are not enough
backup power supplies in it. Meanwhile, power flow between
supplier and consumer are unbalanced in the system A and C
and their stability control devices take measures to solve the
problem individually. It can be seen that all relays act
correctly as expected in the whole process, but the outage
occurs in the system B. The possible reasons of this cascading
event are that the relays and stability control devices only
protect their own parts, and are lack of the global concept. So,
a global stability control system is proposed as described in
section 3.
III. A SCHEME OF GLOBAL STABILITY CONTROL SYSTEM
The block diagram of the global stability control system is
proposed as shown in Fig. 4. The control center receives
global system data from WAMS, EMS/SCADA, protection
and area stability control to analyze system stability and
compute the control strategies, and then sends control
commands to area control station. The area control stations are
in charge of gathering and coordinating data from local control
devices and send them to the control center and send the
commands from control center to local control devices. The
local control devices collect data from power system and send
them to area control station and execute the commands from
the control center. The control center is the main part of the
global stability control system and making control strategies is
the main function of the control center.
When operation of power system is in a normal condition,
with the variety of operation modes and network topologies
and system parameters, the transmission limit can be updated
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in the control center, and then is sent to local control devices
in real-time. Therefore, the power system can operate in a
wider region without losing security and avoid wasting the
resources of electric power.
Fig. 4. The global stability control system
When a disturbance occurs in the power system, in order to
realize the real-time stability control in power system, it is
necessary to predict the trajectories of the system and decide
whether the system is stable or not first. Some prediction
methods based on WAMS are proposed in recent years. For
example: curve extrapolated method, intelligent prediction
method and some other methods base on models of power
system. Curve extrapolated methods such as polynomial curve
fitting method [2]-[4], self-regression method [5] and some
intelligent prediction methods [6]-[11], have been proposed.
However the prediction accuracy cannot be guaranteed. In
[12]-[13], there is another method to realize fast prediction
based on simple system model using PMU measurements. But
this method needs several hypotheses, which limit its
applications. We are trying to study on trajectories prediction
based on a curve fitting technique described in another paper.
When the control center finds that the system will be
unstable after running the prediction algorithm, it will make
some control strategies on-line according to the predicted
trend of the power system and send these strategies to area
control stations. These strategies will be translated and then
sent to the corresponding local control devices to execute in
the area control station. Therefore the control strategies are
done before the power system is deteriorating. If the operation
state of the system still remains unstable, the control center
will refresh the control strategies again and again till the
system returns to a stable state. This is the whole closed-loop
control flow chart as shown in Fig. 5.
Fig. 5 shows that there is a feed back loop in the algorithm.
This structure ensures the stability control strategies to be
updated in real-time through feed back control.
This design use dynamic information of whole system, it
can solve the problem of stability in a global way and also can
coordinate with original local control devices. If the problem
is in the local system, the corresponding local control devices
can act quickly before the global control act, then this act
information will be sent to the control center and the control
center will analyze the next step. When the control strategies
in local control devices collide with these in global control

system, local control should comply with the strategies in
global control system.
Fig. 5. The flow chart of stability control algorithms in control center
No matter in the stability prediction or control, the
simulating computations are necessary. So the accuracy of
simulating computations should be assured, i.e. the system
models and parameters should be validated first [14]. But it is
impossible to do the experiments arbitrarily in power systems.
Fig. 4 show the historical dynamic process of the global power
system is captured by the control center. So, the possible path
of model and parameter validation can be done through these
dynamic data as shown in Fig. 6.
Fig. 6. Schematic diagram of simulation
In Fig. 6, Δ represents the validity of models and parameters
in power system. It can be used as assessing the validity of the
models and parameters in power system.
After simulation assessed by the field data several times, the
relation between the accuracy of simulation and validity of
models and parameters will be found. Therefore, although the
prediction result by simulation is not verified by actual system
data, the accuracy and certainty of it can be assessed too.
Finally, there are following problems to be studied in the
future in the whole scheme of global stability control system.
1. Study on a rule of dynamic setting for the transmission
limits, and in which the setting can be computed quickly.
2. Study on new trajectory prediction methods based on
WAMS and identification theories and algorithms of system
stability.
3. Study of some data digging techniques and information
processing methods,
4. Study on global stability control algorithms based on
WAMS, and how to make the algorithms when time delaying
is considered.
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5. Study on assessing methods and index of the validity of
models and parameters in power system simulation.
The solutions of all above mentioned problems and the
corresponding numerical examples would be published in
papers later.
IV. STRATEGY TO PREVENT CASCADING EVENT
Current stability control devices cannot solve the problem
of the cascading events as shown in Fig. 1-3, but the global
stability control system can obtain the whole information of
the system such as WAMS, EMS/SCADA, protection and
stability control devices, so, it is possible to solve the
problems as described in detail as bellows.
Because the control center can receive data from WAMS,
EMS/SCADA, protection and control devices, the action
signal of relays and trip signal of breakers in Line 2 are
received by the control center. Then the case of resulting
power flow transfer in Line 1 and 3 is analyzed before their
overload or backup protections acting in the control center.
If the case is only a power flow transfer, then the
corresponding control strategies are made in control center
according to the balance of supply and demand. The control
center will send power generation control, power generation
and load control, power generation control to system A, B, and
C respectively as shown in Fig. 7. i.e. according to the balance
of supply and demand in system A, B, and C, some generators
should be tripped in system A and C, while some generators
should increase their output and some loads should be shed in
system B. Therefore, the power flow is decreased in Line 1
and Line 3, the corresponding relay can not act any more and
power supply form A and C to B is remained.
If the case is a fault occurring in Line 1 or Line 3 also, the
corresponding main protections will act and trip its breakers.
The action time of main protection is about a few
ten-milliseconds, the control center receives the protection
action signal from Line 1or Line 3 when it is analyzing the
power flow increase in Line 1 or Line 3 during this time, so
the analyzing is refreshed by added the new information in the
control center.
Fig. 7. A scheme of stability control
A problem needed to be studied in the future is that if a fault
occurs in a line and its main protection refuses to act and then
the line is overloading, how to decide the reason is power flow
transferring of other lines or a fault occurring in it.
V. CONCLUSIONS
The overall design of a global control system is proposed in
this paper, its functions including dynamic revising setting of

transmission limits, perturbed trajectory prediction and
stability identification and global stability control. This design
is the combination of electric engineering and communication
technologies. It is based on the global information and aims at
the security and reliability of power system operation. The
suggested scheme can revise setting of transmission limits
flexibly according to the operation state in power system.
With perturbed trajectory prediction and stability
identification, it can estimate the trend of system operation,
and so that it can win time for preparing control strategy
before the system deteriorate. Moreover, the future works in
the suggested scheme are summarized. Model and parameter
validation is essential for trajectory prediction and control. So,
a new idea of model and parameter validation based on
WAMS is proposed. The global control system is under
developing and the simulation results would be published
later.
VI. REFERENCES
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[8] F. Lin, Y.T. Liu, and X.Z. Qiu, "Power System Transient Stability
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VII. BIOGRAPHIES
F.F. Song was born in China, on Jun 15, 1977. She received her BS and MS
degrees in power system & Automation Department from North China electric
power university in Baoding in 1999 and 2003 respectively. Now she is a
Ph.D. candidate in North China Electric Power University in Beijing. Her
interests are power system stability prediction and control based on WAMs.
T.S. Bi (St.M’1998, M’2002) received her B.Sc. (Eng.) and M.Sc. (Eng.)
degrees in EE from North China Electric Power University in 1994 and 1997
respectively and her Ph.D. degree in EE from the University of Hong Kong in
2002. Since then she has joined North China Electric Power University as an
associate professor. Now she is the vice director of Key Laboratory of Power
System Protection & Dynamic Monitoring and Control under Ministry of
Education. Her research interest is power system control, protective relay and
the application of artificial intelligence in power systems.
Q.X. Yang received his B. Sc. (Eng.) and M.Sc. (Eng.) degrees in EE from
Zhejiang University in 1957 and 1960 respectively and his PhD. Degree in EE
from the University of New South Wales, Australia. Since 1960, he has joined
North China Electric Power University. His research interest is power system
control and protective relaying. He is a Chinese Academician of Engineering