th

THE 9 INTERNATIONAL SYMPOSIUM ON ADVANCED TOPICS IN ELECTRICAL ENGINEERING

May 7-9, 2015
Bucharest, Romania

On-line Power Systems Voltage Stability

Monitoring using Artificial Neural Networks
Constantin BULAC1, Ion TRITIU1, Alexandru MANDI1, Lucian TOMA1
University Politehnica of Bucharest, Department of Electrical Power Systems

cbulac@yahoo.com, ion_tristiu@yahoo.com, alexandrumandis@yahoo.com, lucian.toma@upb.ro

Abstract A method for on-line voltage stability monitoring of a
power system based on Multilayer Perceptron (MLP) neural
network is proposed in this paper. Considering that the power
system is operating under quasistatic conditions, by using power
flow model and singular value decomposition of the reduced
Jacobian matrix, a suitable index to quantify the proximity of
power system voltage instability is defined. Then, a neuronal
network is trained to learn the correlation between the key
factors of the voltage stability phenomena and this index. Once
trained, the neural network provides the above mentioned
voltage stability index as output for a predefined set of input
variables that are known as directly influencing the stability
conditions of the power system. Since the input variables for the
neural network may be obtained from the steady state estimator,
the proposed method can be implemented as a function of the
Energy Management System (EMS) for on-line voltage stability
monitoring. Tests are carried out using the IEEE 30-bus system,
where different operating scenarios are considered.
Keywords: neural networks, voltage stability index

I.

INTRODUCTION

Voltage stability, defined as the ability of a power system

to maintain a controllable voltage profile, become a relevant
concern during planning and real time operation of the power
systems. Even though the phenomenon is recognized as a
dynamic one, under certain assumptions, a static system
model can be used for voltage stability analysis and
monitoring. Static methods investigate the mechanism
causing voltage instability and collapse, and are generally
based on the load flow equations [1][2][3][4]. Dynamic
approaches, based on the observation that the instability and
collapse phenomena depend on the dynamics of the loads and
voltage control devices, employ generally step-by-step
techniques [2][3][4]. An important topic in the area of voltage
stability is the voltage security monitoring of power systems.
This function is a task that must be performed at regular
intervals in the power system control center and can be very
time consuming and memory intensive if a comprehensive
approach based on the dynamic model is adopted.
Consequently, a great deal of effort has been devoted to the
development of practical tools for analyzing and monitoring
voltage stability of power systems using static approaches.
More recently, artificial neural networks (ANNs) have been
used to obtain very fast solutions of problems related to
power system operating and control, in general, and voltage
stability, in particular [5][6]. The main feature of an ANN is
the ability to achieve complicated input-output mappings
through a learning process, without explicit programming. In

978-1-4799-7514-3/15/$31.00 2015 IEEE

this paper, the effectiveness of using MLP neural network for

on-line voltage stability monitoring is explored.
In order to optimize the architecture of the neuronal
network and minimize the computation effort, only those
state variables with major impact on the power system
voltage stability are selected as inputs. The output is the
target index, that is the value of the VSI (Voltage Stability
Index), defined based on the smallest singular value of the
reduced Jacobian matrix [1][2][8].
The input quantities of the neural network may be
obtained from the steady state estimator, thereby the proposed
method can be implemented as a function of EMS (Energy
Management System) for on-line voltage stability monitoring.
The effectiveness of the proposed neural network-based
approach has been tested on the IEEE-30 bus test system.
II.

STEADY STATE VOLTAGE STABILITY MODEL AND

INDEX

The singular value decomposition, one of the methods

recommended by the IEEE [1], was employed to identify the
key features concerning the voltage stability and to define the
voltage stability index (VSI).
Assuming that the power system operates under
quasistatic conditions, its state is completely governed by the
following set of the nonlinear power flow equations modified
to integrate the static characteristics of the loads (voltage
dependence of the nodal powers) [2]:
n
Pi (Ui ) UiU k Gik cosik + Bik sin ik =0
k =1
(1)
n
Qi (Ui ) UiU k Gik sin ik Bik cos ik =0
k =1
where:
Pi and Qi are the active and reactive powers at bus i;
U i and i are the voltage magnitude and phase angle at
bus i;
ik = i k .
After linearization of the nonlinear equations (1) around of
the actual operating point, the following linear representation
of the power system in steady state is obtained:

J P
=
U J Q

J
where:

J PU

P
=

J QU U Q

J is the load flow Jacobian matrix;

(2)

P and Q = incremental changes in the bus real

and reactive powers;
and U = incremental changes in the bus
voltages phase angle and magnitude.
The power system voltage stability is affected by both
active power P and reactive power Q. However, at each
operating point we may keep P constant and evaluate the
voltage stability by considering the incremental relationship
between Q and U. Based on above considerations we can
substitute for P = 0 in (2) which give:

Q = J R U
1

(4)

is the reduced Jacobian matrix. If the singular value

decomposition [7] [8] is applied to JR, we have:
n PQ

L R
i

T
i

(5)

i =1

where n PQ is the size of J R (number of PQ buses in the

power system), L and R are orthonormal matrices, the
singular vectors Li and Ri are the columns of the matrices L
and R, and is a diagonal matrix of the positive singular
values i , such that 1 2 ... nQ .
If J R is nonsingular, the effect of a small change in the
reactive power injections Q on the U vector can be
written as
n PQ

U = J Q =

1 T
i

(6)

L i Q

i =1

In the vicinity of a voltage collapse point, when a singular

value is almost zero, the system U-Q response is entirely
determined by the minimum singular value n and its
PQ

singular vectors L n and R n , respectively. Under these

PQ

PQ

U = J Q R n n L n Q

conditions

PQ

taking into account that L n L n = 1 and L i L n = 0 for

PQ

PQ

PQ

i nPQ , we have
1

U = R n n
PQ

(8)

PQ

In addition, if in (2) P = 0 , we have

1

= J P J PU U = J P J PU R n n
Q

J R = J QU J Q J P J PU

PQ

(3)

where:

J = LR =

Based on the above observations concerning the right and

the left singular vectors, one can be identified the critical
elements of the power system. Thus, if in (6) Q = L n then,

PQ

PQ

(7)

(9)

With the phase angle and voltage magnitude variations

known, the branches and generators participation factors are
calculated as in the modal analysis method [9].
Although the lowest singular value min (JR) represents a
global index for the voltage instability occurrence, it has the
disadvantage of not giving a precise information related to
how close is the critical frontier located. In order to have a
global information on the location of the equilibrium point
with respect to a critical surface, the minimum singular value,
0min(JR ), for the no-load operating conditions (considered as
the most stable [10]), is also calculated. The voltage stability
index (VSI) is thereby defined as:
(J )
VSI = min R
(10)
0 min ( J R )
A value of VSI close to zero shows that the power system
operating point is located in the vicinity of the critical frontier
whereas a value close to 1 shows that the system is far from
the critical frontier.

III.

NEURAL NETWORK ARCHITECTURE

The Multilayer Perceptron, one of the most popular and

successful neural network architectures, consists of a number
of identical elements organized in layers, where those on one
layer are connected with those on the next layer so that the
outputs of one layer are feed-forward as inputs to the next
layer (Fig. 1).

If Q = L n then, from L n L n = 1 and (7) we have

PQ

U = R n
PQ

1
n PQ

PQ

PQ

. Therefore the following interpretations can

be made [3]:

Output layer

the smallest singular value n

PQ

= min ( J R ) , which is a

way of identifying the singularity of the Jacobin matrix,

indicates the voltage stability reserve as distance between
the studied operation point and the voltage stability limit,
where the matrix J R become singular;

the right singular vector R n corresponding to nQ

PQ

indicates the voltage sensitivities (the weak buses);

the left singular vector L n corresponding to nQ
PQ

indicates the most sensitive direction for change of

reactive power injections.

Input layer
Hidden
layer

Fig. 1. Structure of a MLP with a hidden layer and a single output

In this work, a MLP-type neural network is proposed for

implementation in the power systems control center in order
to provide synthetic information regarding the position of the
current operating point with respect to a critical frontier,
without performing a detailed analysis based on the singular
value decomposition of JR, which requires increased
computational effort.
The neural network is trained to estimate the value of the

Vulnerable Area

29

28

27
30

25

26
23
15

24
19

18
17

14

16

21

11

12

13

20
22
10

G4

G5

G6
2

G3

G2

G1

Fig. 3. IEEE 30 buses test system

The database necessary for training, validation and testing

the neural network was generated off-line using the
algorithmic software EPSA (Electric Power System Analysis)
developed by the authors under MATLAB as an educational
and research tool for power system stability analysis.
In the first step, in order to identify the vulnerable network
elements and to define the set of input variables, a detailed
analysis of the power system behavior under various loading
conditions between no-load and maximum was performed.
For this purpose, the singular value decomposition method,
presented in section II, was implemented in the VoltStab
function of the EPSA tool.
Figure 4 shows the variation of the VSI against the loading
with respect to the base case, under the N conditions. It can
be seen that when the size of the JR matrix changes, following
the transition of some PU buses into PQ buses, large steep
falls in the VSI value are observed. These falls are also
displayed on the voltage stability monitor which warns the
operator that critical changes occurred into the power system
which force some generators operate at the reactive power
limit.
1

VSI

Classification

1 2

Fig. 2. The architecture of the on-line voltage stability monitoring function

using a MLP-type neural network.

IV.

load-generation pattern and parameters of the transmissions

line/transformers are those provided in [11].

SIMULATION RESULTS

The effectiveness of the proposed approach was tested on

IEEE 30-bus test system. This system has 6 generators and 24
loads, and 41 branches, respectively (Fig. 3). The base case

Voltage Stability Index (VSI)

Neural network

The input variables

VSI index using information provided by the static state

estimator. The architecture of the MLP is shown in Figure 1
and consists of:
The input layer formed by:
1. Total active and reactive demand (Pd and Qd).
2. Total active and reactive generation (Pg and Qg).
3. Total active and reactive losses (Plosses and Qlosses).
4. Total reactive power generation reserves (Qgr).
5. The number of generators sitting at Qg limit (ngQl).
6. The number of buses with voltage below 1 p.u. (nblv).
7. The number of branches with loading over 75% (nb75).
8. The number of branches out of service (nbo=0 or 1).
9. Voltage magnitude and active and reactive power
demand at the most critical buses (Ui, Pdi, Qdi).
10. Loading of the most critical branches (Sbi).
11. Loading/Reserves of the most critical generators (Qgi).
The output layer consisting of one neuron that provide
the estimated value of VSI.
A certain number of neurons on the hidden layer which
depends on the neuronal network behavior during the
training validation testing process, in terms of the
convergence rate, errors, etc.
In order to classify the actual state of the power system
with respect to the surface of critical states, the range [0, 1] of
variation of VSI is divided into three subintervals that
represent the following classes:
class C1 characterized by VSI (1 , 1] , corresponding
to a stable operation state;
class C2 characterized by VSI ( 2 , 1 ] , corresponding
to an alert operation state;
class C3 characterized by VSI [0, 2 ] , corresponding to
a critical operation state.
The coefficients 1 and 2 are determined in terms of the
power system characteristics based on detailed off-line
analyses.
Under the above-mentioned aspects, the method proposed
for on-line voltage stability assessment consists in estimating
the global VSI by means of a neural network, based on the
information achieved from the state estimator. This index can
be displayed in the form of a position inside a predefined
state range, as shown in Figure 2.

0.8

0.6

0.4

0.2

0
0

0.5

Load level

1.5

Fig. 4. Plot of the VSI versus the load variation.

With the bus sensitivities and the branch and generator

participation factors obtained in the first step, the most
vulnerable elements were identified:
buses: 30, 29, 26, 25 and 27 (vulnerable area in Fig. 3).
branches: 27-28, 9-10, 24-25, 27-29, and 27-30.
generators: G3, G5 and G4.
Therefore, a number of 34 input quantities for the neural
network were identified, i.e.: 11 global attributes (Pd, Qd, Pg,
Qg, P, Q, Qgr, ngQl, nblv, nb75, nbo) and 24 case attributes
(5(Ui, Pdi, Qdi) + 4Sbi+3Qgi) .
Then, once the input-output configuration of the neural
network is defined, the database was generated. Assuming
load variations and/or branch contingency then 7000 sets of
data, corresponding to different operating states, were
generated. For each operating state, the VoltStab function of
the EPSA tool has determined the VSI values based on the
singular value decomposition, which represents outputs of the
neural network. The architecture of the neural network was
achieved with the Neural Network Fitting Tool from Matlab,
which helps creating and training a neural network, then
evaluating its performances using mean square error and
regression analysis.
For the voltage stability analysis, 6000 examples were
randomly chosen, out of the 7000 examples initially
generated, which were then split such that: 70% were used for
training, 15% for validation, and 15% for testing. The
Levenberg-Marquardt algorithm was employed for training,
considering various numbers of neurons on the hidden layer.
In this way, is was identified that the optimum number of
neurons on the hidden layer is 15. The neural network
performances, evaluated using the mean square error, are
presented in Figure 5, and the regression analysis shows a
very good input-output correlation, the correlation factor
being R=0.99994.
The neural network was tested on the remaining 1000
examples, which proved again a very good input-output
correlation, the correlation factor being R=0.99993.
Best Validation Performance is 6.5273e-07 at epoch 780

Mean Squared Error (mse)

10

Train
Validation
Test
Best

-2

10

method assumes performing two steps. In the first step, using

an algorithmic procedure based on the singular value
decomposition method, a detailed analysis of the power
system operation under various conditions with respect to the
base case is performed. The results are used to identify the
U-Q characteristics of the power system based on which the
input parameters of the neural network are defined. In the
second step, the neuronal network is generated, trained,
validated and tested using the Neural Network Fitting Tool
from Matlab to estimate the value of the voltage stability
index VSI, based on the smallest singular value of the
reduced Jacobian JR. The simulations have shown that one
hidden layer only is optimal for fitting the inputs and the
output (the VSI) of the neural network. The efficiency of the
proposed method was determined on the IEEE 30-bus test
system. A software called EPSA, developed by the authors
under Matlab, was employed to generate the simulation
database. In real control centers, such database can be
obtained from the state estimator, thereby the proposed
method can be implemented as additional function of the
Energy Management System (EMS).
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
The work has been funded by the Sectoral Operational
Programme Human Resources Development 2007-2013 of
the Ministry of European Funds through the Financial
Agreement POSDRU/159/1.5/S/132397.
REFERENCES
[1]
[2]
[3]
[4]
[5]
[6]
[7]
[8]

-4

10

[9]
-6

10

[10]
100

200

300

400
500
786 Epochs

600

700

Fig. 5. Neural network performance during the training, validation and

testing process.

V.

CONCLUSIONS

The work presented in this paper aimed to analyze the

opportunity of employing a MLP-type neural network for online power system voltage stability monitoring. The proposed

[11]

Suggested techniques for voltage stability studies. IEEE Special

Publication 90th 0620-5PWR, 1993.
M. Eremia, C. Bulac, Voltage Stability chapter 10 in M.Eremia and
M. Shahidehpour editors, Hand Book of Electrical Power System.
Dynamics, Modeling, and Control, IEEE Press, Wiley, 2013.
P. Kundur, Power System Stability and Control, McGraw-Hill, Inc,
1994.
T. Van Cutsem, C. Vournas, Voltage Stability of Electric Power
Systems, Springer, 1998.
M. Tarafdar, A.M. Kashtiban, Applications of Neural Networks in
Power Systems; A review, International Journal of Electrical,
Electronics and Communication Engineering, Vol.1, No.6, 2007.
A.R. Bahmaniar, A. Karami, Power system voltage stability
monitoring using artificial neural networks with a reduced set of
inputs, Electrical Power and Energy Systems 58 (2014).
G.H. Golub, C.F. Van Loan, Matrix Computation, The John
Hopkins University Press, 1996.
P. A. Lof, T. Smed, G. Andersson and D. J. Hill, Fast calculation of a
voltage stability index. IEEE Trans. on Power Systems, Vol. 7, No. 1,
Feb. 1992.
B. Gao, G.K. Morison and P. Kundur, Voltage stability evaluation
using modal analysis. IEEE Trans. on Power Systems, Vol. 7, No. 4,
Nov. 1992.
J. Constantinescu, Practical Assessment of the Power System
Stability Margins, Revue Roumain des Sciences Techniques, serie
Electrotechnique et Energetique Tom. 39, Nr. 2, Bucharest 1994.
O. Alsac and B. Stott, Optimal load flow with steady state security,
IEEE Trans. Power Apparatus Systems, 1974.