Electric Power Systems Research 42 (1997) 181 188

ELSEVIER

ELEO*rRIO
POWER
8WSTEm8
R|$|nROI,I

An extended Ward equivalent approach for power system

security assessment
K.L. Lo

a,*, L.J. Peng a, J.F. Macqueen b A.O. Ekwue b D.T.Y. Cheng b

a Department o f Electronic and Electrical Engineering, UniversiO, of Strathclyde, Royal College Building, 204 George Street,
Glasgow GI IXW, UK
b The National Grid Company plc, Coventry, UK

Received 8 November 1996

Abstract

A complete extended Ward equivalent approach is proposed for on-line security assessment of a power system. This new
approach combines the off-line topological modelling of the extended Ward equivalent with on-line updating of the parameters
of the equivalent model for representing real time topology changes of the external system. Test results indicate that the new
equivalent model has an excellent response from the external system to the contingencies of the internal system. ,~ 1997 Elsevier
Science S.A.
Keywords: Power system model; External system equivalent; Network reduction: Contingency analysis; Static security assessment

I. Introduction

On-line static security assessment is in c o m m o n use

today for monitoring the security of a power system.
However, the transmission network operated by any
utility will almost inevitably be connected to other
power systems as part of an interconnected entity.
Thus, the security assessment involves analysis of the
original transmission system (the internal system) connected via boundary buses to an external system. In this
paper, the combined network will be referred to as the
study system and this may be much larger than the
original internal system. The focus of the security assessment is normally on the internal system which is
affected by changes external to itself or by the reaction
of the external system to its own contingencies. Thus, in
order accurately and effectively to assess the security of
the (relatively small) internal system while having regard to the speed of calculation required for on-line
timescales, it may be necessary to have a suitably
parametrised reduced equivalent model of the large
external system.
There have been m a n y external system model applications in the past twenty years [1 3]. These techniques
* Corresponding author.
0378-7796/97/$17.00 1997 Elsevier Science S.A. All rights reserved.
PII S0378-7796(96)01203-5

are basically divided into two categories: one is the

unreduced load flow model (ULF) [4-6] which is a load
flow model of the external network; this does not
greatly reduce the calculated size. The others are based
on the equivalent method. Most attention has been
directed at the latter method for the external system
equivalent model which uses the R E I (Radial Equivalent Independent), Ward or their variations. The RE1type equivalent [7,8] is constructed around some
assumed or known base case external operating condition in order to aggregate external loads and generations at a few R E I PQ and PV nodes with some
adjustment mechanism to match the real-time tie-line
flow. The Ward-type equivalent [9 14] is a topology
equivalent method. A lot of publications have shown
this technique can perform well for the external system
equivalent. The technique creates some equivalent lines
and some equivalent power injections at boundary
buses for equalisation of the external system. Many
publications demonstrated that the extended Ward
equivalent is the most efficient method for implementation and requires the least amount of computer resources.
However, the performance of the extended Ward
equivalent method is limited by the fact that during
on-line use, it is not capable of reflecting the topology

182

K.L. Lo et al./Electric Power Systems Research 42 (1997) 181 188

changes of the external system when the information

concerning the external system is incomplete. Although
much work has been done to enhance the data exchange between energy management control centres, it
is impossible at the present to obtain all the real time
information from the whole external system. An alternative method is to improve existing equivalent modelling for on-line applications. Bose [15] pointed out
that status errors affect the security analysis results
more than analogue errors, and that errors electrically
closer to the internal system have a larger effect than
those further away. Meanwhile, the IEEE Task Force
on Data Exchange for Security Assessment [16] suggested that a portion of the external system which is
electrically close to the internal system should be monitored by means of real-time data exchange. This small
portion is defined as the buffer zone. To develop this
idea, a complete extended Ward equivalent approach is
proposed in this paper by assuming that the line status
of the buffer zone is known. This new approach improves the extended Ward equivalent technique and is
able to simulate the significant topology changes of the
external system.
The extended Ward equivalent technique is briefly
reviewed and discussed in the first section. The second
section introduces the method of updating the parameters of the equivalent model to reflect the main response
from the external system to contingencies of the internal system. In the final section, the new method is
tested on the N G C 706-bus system. The results demonstrate the real time external equivalent model has a
good accuracy for contingency analysis of the internal
system.

The interconnected power system is separated into

three parts: internal, boundary and external as shown
in Fig. 1.
To calculate the external network models used by the
Ward-type equivalent, an ordered bus admittance matrix should be constructed. It is assumed that the set of

External
System

I
Boundary

I
study~tem

I YEE

YEB

0 ]

Ym

YII

The Ward-type equivalent method represents the external system by a set of equivalent lines and power
injections attached at boundary buses. The basic Ward
equivalent disregards all of the external buses. The
Ward-PV equivalent has a basic Ward equivalent of
external PQ buses and retained PV buses. The extended
Ward equivalent combines the simplicity of the basic
Ward equivalent with the reactive power response of
the Ward-PV equivalent; the approach is summarised in
the following four steps:
9 1. Step 1: Obtaining a Ward equivalent vEq
o f tlle
XBB
external network
~.

Omitting all shunt elements of the

from Eq. (1), all the external buses are
leaving an equivalent network to be
boundary. The bus admittance matrix

[Y]=

0
0

'''

Y~3~+Y~

".....

Ym

YB,

external system
then eliminated,
attached at the
Y then becomes:

(2)

YII ]

The admittance matrix Y~q of the equivalent network,

containing only the boundary buses, can be obtained by
a triangular reduction of the columns of the external
buses using Gaussian elimination or matrix calculation:

2. Review of extended Ward equivalent

Internal
System

buses of an interconnected power system can be partitioned into external (subscript E), boundary (subscript
B) and internal (subscript I) buses. For an original
unreduced system, the corresponding bus admittance
matrix Y is shown as follows:

system to be equivalenced

[yBEq] = [ Y,3.
EB + YBBI
BB -- [ Y,~z][YEE] '[ YEB]

(3)

2.2. Step 2: Boun&trv matching j o r calculating the

equivalent power injections at boundary buses

Under steady state conditions the effect of the external on the internal system is reflected by the active and
reactive power flow from the external system into the
boundary buses. From the state estimator, it becomes
feasible to obtain the present state of the internal
system, i.e. bus voltage magnitudes V and phase angles
0 . Hence, it is easy to calculate the equivalent injections at boundary buses. For each boundary bus i:

epn = y [(v'i')2(ge/+ g,o)

is i

Fig. 1. Interconnectedpower system.

V
--i V, j ,(g 8 *COS 0 . + b,j * sin O'e})]

(4)

183

K.L. Lo et al./Electric Power Systems Research 42 (1997) 181 188

2.4. Step 4: Real-time boundao, matching

Equivalent power injection

Internal
System

Equivalent l i n e ~"::2.

tie-line
B

Fig. 2. Study system with Ward equivalent connected.

QEiq = E

[ - (vi )2(bii + bio)

.leVi

-o u , c s 0 - gu * sin0)]
+ V~o l//(b

(5)

where, gu + Jbu is the branch admittance from bus i to

bus j; gio +jbo is the shunt admittance at bus i; 0 9 =
0~] - 0 is the voltage phase angle difference between
bus i and bus j, the admittance corresponds to all
equivalent and actual branches terminating on bus i. By
definition, therefore, the base-case power flows in the
tie-lines are matched exactly. The above two steps
describe the basic Ward equivalent method. The study
system plus Ward equivalent lines and equivalent
power injections are shown in Fig. 2.
2.3, Step 3: Extend a fictitious branch to a .fictitious
P V node at every boundary bus to reflect the external
system ~' reactive power response to changes in the
internal system

At every boundary bus a fictitious PV node is added

with zero active power injection; its voltage magnitude
V corresponds to the boundary bus voltage magnitude
obtained from on-line state estimation. The associated
fictitious branches can be obtained by the following
three steps:
return to the unreduced system to reconstruct the
matrix [Y] as in Eq. (1), insert all the network shunts
and ground all PV buses in the external system (i.e.
put very large admittance on the relevant diagonals
of g);
repeat Step 1 for the network reduction calculation
by eliminating all external buses to obtain the equivalent shunts at the boundary buses;
use only the reactive components (inductive or capacitive) of the equivalent shunts as /~iThe extended Ward equivalent is based on the Ward
equivalent and an extended fictitious branch at every
boundary bus. The study system with the equivalent
network can be shown in Fig. 3.

When the loading conditions change, the equivalent

power injections in Eqs. (4) and (5) will be updated
using the real-time data. The equivalent power injection
at boundary buses will reflect the power balance between the internal and the external system at different
load levels.
When the external topology changes, the equivalent
model should be updated. However, it is very difficult
to exchange all the necessary on-line data between
energy management control centres. Furthermore, even
if the information is known, it will require heavy con:putation to perform the equivalencing frequently. The
extended Ward equivalent method is therefore not suitable for on-line modelling for significant configuration
changes in the external system. This is why the extended Ward equivalent method is referred to as incomplete.

3. A complete extended Ward equivalent approach

The effects of external line outages in terms of reactive power response from the external system impact on
contingency analysis of the internal system and have to
be taken into account.
In order to describe the new approach, the set of the
external buses is further partitioned into PQ buses
(subscript Q) and PV buses (subscript V). Thus, Eq. (1)
is re-organised into the following form:

YQQ YQV
YVQ

Yvv

YOB
YVB

YIB

0 "]
0
YH

(6)

After eliminating all external PQ buses but retaining all

the external PV buses, the Ward-PV equivalent network
is obtained, and the associated bus admittance matrix
is:

P~oo
m

Internal
System

Equivalentlines

I
Fig. 3. Study system with extended Ward equivalent.

K.L. Lo et a l . / Electric Power Systems Research 42 (1997) 181 188

184

Y~'B

AOi=Vt[B;iAVi- E

Y~,'v

YBV

Y 13B q- YBB

YBI

Ym

Y,

rEq

BI

- ~ B;;,,AV,,,]

BB[]FZ~VB]

BIB

= [AQ

(14)

m e [/q

Since the major interest is the reactive power support

from external PV buses, and because A Vv = 0, the
incremental decoupled reactive power flow equation of
the Ward-PV equivalent takes the following form (the
B' term is derived from - B of Y= G + j B ) :
[ uj~'lEq
BB tA- ~il~BBI
B

B;mA[Tm- B;tiAVi

,,. E [h]

(7)

B,/' V B ~

,.ALAV, A LAQ,/,~, j

A0,=

V~(B'.+ ~ B'..,- B',',- ~ B,,,.)AV,.

m ~ [tq

(15)

m ~ [b]

From Eq. (7). BI~ is expressed in the form:

(8)

From the above equation, the reactive power response

of the Ward-PV equivalent to the changes in boundary
voltages A VB becomes:
[A Q ~] = [ V~][B'~q][A VB]

where [b] is a set of boundary buses excluding bus i.

For further simplification, let A V, = A ~ . . . . . A V,.,
thus

(16)

~'.= - E ~',,,,- E ~;k

/.-~[~,]

m~-[h]

where [v] is a set of external PV buses.

From Eq. (10), B'/, is known to be of the form:

(9)

where [VB] is a diagonal matrix.

Based on Eq. (7), all the external PV buses can be
eliminated. The remaining network is referred to as the
basic Ward equivalent. The corresponding bus admittance matrix is:

8;:,= -

8"i..,

(17)

me[6]

Letting [/?] = [ B ' ~ ] - [B"~q] with substitution of Eqs.

(16) and (17) into Eq. (15), /t~ becomes:

9;=-

Y 8;k

(18)

k~[v]

0
.

,..
v ' E BB
q +
.

B[
YB~
.

Ym

YBI
YH ]

then,

(lO)

AQi= - Vi(k;qB'tk~t,
)AVi=\ /

(19)

It is apparent that the incremental decoupled reactive

power flow equation of the basic Ward equivalent
relative to the changes in boundary buses voltages A VB
is:
-

BB--~BB

B,B

qp, vq
B.ALAV, A

(11)

L AQI/V, J

Then, the reactive power response of the Ward equivalent can be expressed as:
[A Q B] = [ VB][B"~q][A VB]

(12)

By comparing Eqs. (9) and (12), and noting that the

Ward equivalent is desired to have the same reactive
response as the Ward-PV equivalent, it is apparent that
reactive power injections should be added at boundary
buses as follows:
[ a 0 ~] = [ G]([B'~ q] - [B"~])[A G]

Vit~iAV~=V'I~i(V;-- Vi)

(13)

Unfortunately, the reactive response at the boundary

buses given by Eq. (13) cannot be directly incorporated
in the load flow computing model. For this reason, an
approximation to Eq. (13), which can be directly implemented in an ac load flow program, must be derived.
According to Eq. (13), for the boundary bus i, the
reactive power support is:

where V is the voltage magnitude at boundary bus i in

the pre-contingency operating condition; V~ is the
voltage magnitude at boundary bus i in the post-contingency operating condition; /~; is an equivalent susceptance.
The reactive power response A(~s from the external
system to the boundary bus i can be then calculated
according to Eq. (19). From the view of circuit theory,
the reactive power response from the external system
can be equivalenced by an extended fictitious branch
and a fictitious PV bus at every boundary bus as shown
in Fig. 3. This is referred to as extended Ward equivalent. The active power injections of these fictitious PV
buses are all specified as zero. The voltage magnitude in
the fictitious PV bus extended from boundary bus i is
specified as V before the contingency analysis is performed. In contingency analysis, the fictitious PV buses
will respond with the supply or absorption of reactive
power when the voltage magnitude of boundary buses
is greater or less than in the pre-contingency operating
condition. The voltage magnitudes of these fictitious
PV buses can be obtained from the state estimation of
the internal system. The reactive power response from
the external system can then be simulated once the
fictitious branches /~ are determined.

K.L. Lo et al. /'Electric Power Systems Research 42 (1997) 181-188

Internal System

Boundary

External System
:z:: :::: ::,

iiiiiii~BufferZone
~i::i:ili.i!!i,
!I:~:I:~Z:I:!:I,

I
B

I
l, Study Syslem

:::::::::::::::,

ii:iiiiiiiiiiii:Distant Network

:. :=: :=:,
...::..:.:.:.,
!::~:::::::.::,
<.::.:.:.:.,

:;!iiiililili:!

v.

System to be equivalent

Fig. 4, The four subsystems of the interconnected system.

The extended Ward equivalent gives reasonable accuracy for both active and reactive power flows. In online applications, the operating conditions of the
external system vary with time. The extended Ward
equivalent model can reflect the load condition changes
of the external system by matching the boundary equivalent power injections, but fail to simulate significant
configuration changes since it is very difficult to obtain
all the on-line topology information from the external
system. Furthermore, even if the information is known,
it will require heavy computation to perform the equivalencing frequently. The extended Ward equivalent
method is therefore not suitable for on-line modelling
of significant configuration changes of the external system.
In order to monitor effectively the internal system
and keep the external system model up to date and
realistic, the fictitious branch/~ must be updated as the
topology of the external system changes. Clearly the
values of/~ depend on the topology and parameters of
the external system and these can be stored in advance.
In theory, the line status of the external system can be
obtained from the external system. But since the external system is usually very large, it is impossible to know
all topology information from the external system in
on-line applications. IEEE Task Force on Data Exchange for Security Assessment suggested that a small
portion of the external system should be monitored by
means of real time data exchange. The small portion of
the external system is referred to as the buffer zone; the
remainder is referred to as the distant network. The
interconnected network will be divided into four subsystems as shown in Fig. 4. In general, the distant
network is far from the internal system and has little
impact on it; the buffer zone is electrically close to the
boundary buses and has a significant impact on the
internal system.
The definition of the extent of the buffer zone can be
established by off-line studies using a full ac load flow
program. If the variation of a single equivalent parameter/~i exceeds a given difference tolerance (for example
5%) when an external line trips, the line will be allocated into the buffer zone. Otherwise, if the variation of

185

all the equivalent parameters /~, does not exceed the

given difference tolerance, the line is assigned into the
distant network. Due to the different impacts on the
equivalent model when a line trips in the distant network or the buffer zone, there are different methods to
deal with the topology changes in different regions of
the external system.
3.1. Distant network

In the distant network, the simulation of branch

outages is based on a compensation technique [17]
which can keep the external system configuration intact
by adding two power injection increments at the ends
of the line outage. Using this technique, it is obvious
that the effect of line outages in the distant network will
correspond to some load changes. These changes in the
external system have to be taken into account by
performing real-time boundary power matching. In the
base case, the boundary power injections can be
matched perfectly; in contingency analysis, because the
variation of the equivalent B is within the given tolerance, the errors of the reactive power responses from
the external system are acceptable even if the line status
in the distant network are unknown. Therefore, information on line status in the distant network becomes
unnecessary during on-line applications.
3.2. BuJfer zone

The buffer zone is electrically close to the boundary

buses and so its line outages will effect significant
changes in the equivalent parameters of the external
network. The reactive responses of the external system
to contingencies of the internal system can be simulated
by the fictitious branches /~ and the corresponding
fictitious PV buses which are put into the ac power flow
model. The voltage magnitudes of these fictitious PV
buses can be obtained from the state estimator of the
internal system. The key technique of updating the
fictitious branches/~, simulating the topology change of
the distant network by the power injection compensation technique, is focused on the buffer zone. The
network parameters of the buffer zone can be stored in
advance; for updating the fictitious branches /~, only
the line status of the buffer zone is required in on-line
applications. To save computing time in on-line applications, the new /~ can be calculated first and then
stored as a set of transfer distribution factors corresponding to different line outages of the buffer zone in
the equivalent program. When the energy management
control centre of the internal system receives the teletransmission information on topology changes in the
buffer zone, the equivalencing program will automatically replace the original fictitious branches /~ with the
new fictitious branches/? and hence update the equivalent model of the external system.

K.L. Lo et at./Electric Power Systems Research 42 (1997) 181 188

186

Table 2
Equivalent lines between boundary buses

4. Test results

4.1. Test system

The main objective of the test is to demonstrate the
validity of the real time equivalent model of the external network for various possible contingencies in the
internal system. The accuracy of the new proposed
complete extended Ward equivalent method has been
evaluated on the N G C 706-bus power system. The
N G C 706-bus power system was divided into four
subsystem networks: internal, boundary, buffer and
distant network. The six boundary buses were
M E L K A 1 , D U N G A 1 , D I D C A 1 , BRLEA1, MELKB1
and MELKB2. The rule defining the buffer zone is very
simple. The tie lines between the boundary buses and
the external system are called the first order lines; these
first order lines fall into the buffer zone. However,
whether the second order lines which connect to these
tie lines fall in the buffer zone or not will be decided by
off-line analysis using a full ac load flow program. If
one line outage of a second order line causes a 1% or
greater change in the value of the components of the
original fictitious branches /~, the line will also be
defined as being within the buffer zone. Other lines are
defined as being in the distant network. This rule has
been found to work effectively and the size of the
resulting buffer zone is less then 2.5% of the size of the
complete external system. Table 1 lists a summary of
the main topology characteristics of the test system.

4.2. Results of boundary equivalent

Equivalent lines are obtained by the complete extended Ward equivalent method. Table 2 gives the
equivalent lines in the base case (there is no line outage
in the external system). Suppose that EXTRA1, EXT R A 2 ..... E X T R A 6 are the corresponding fictitious PV
buses extended from boundary buses M E L K A I ,
DUNGA1,
DIDCA1,
BRLEA1,
MELKB1
and
MELKB2, respectively, Table 3 gives the extended
equivalent lines to the fictitious PV buses. The
boundary equivalent power injections in the base case
are shown in Table 4.
The parameters of the equivalent networks will be
updated when the topology of the buffer system
changes from the base case.
Table 1
Characteristics of the test system
Number of

Full

Internal

Boundary

Buffer

Distant

Busbar
Line
PV bus

706
1380
119

65
145
12

6
18
0

15
19
1

620
1198
106

From

To

R (in pu)

X (in pu)

MELKA1
M ELKA 1
M ELKA 1
M ELKA 1
MELKAI
DUNGA1
DUNGA1
DUNGAI
DUNGAI
DIDCA 1
DIDCAI
DIDCAI
BRLEA 1
BRLEA1
MELKB1

DUNGAl
D1DCA1
BRLEA 1
M ELKB 1
MELKB2
DIDCA1
BRLEA1
MELKBI
MELKB2
BRLEA 1
MELKBI
MELKB2
M ELKB 1
MELKB2
MELKB2

0.01498
0.00109
0.00093
0.00049
0.00054
0.00293
0.00416
2.13322
2.13096
0.00023
0.06521
0.06512
2.32951
2.32561
0.01127

0.13430
0.01380
0.00749
0.01324
0.01386
0.03343
0.04678
11.07212
11.09619
0.00335
0.37392
0.37473
14.47325
14.50444
0.03412

4.3. Contingeno' analysis

As m a n y contingencies of the internal system as
possible should be considered in the evaluation of
external system modelling. However due to limitations
of space, only the two worst contingencies are given in
detail: Contingency 1 (C1) is a single line outage
( H I N P A 1 - T A U N A S ) which has the heaviest load; Contingency 2 (C2) is a double line outage (LOVEA1M A N N A 1 and A X M I A 1 - M A N N A 1 ) which are close
to the boundary. F o r each contingency of the internal
system, the different responses from the external system
were obtained by the updated equivalent network.
There are 30 cases described in this paper. The first
24 cases correspond to a single line outage in the buffer
zone. For each case, the equivalent model is updated to
correspond with the different topology conditions of
the buffer zone. The last 6 cases correspond to a single
line outage in the distant network. The equivalent
model will remain unchange except in boundary power
matching. All corresponding internal system bus
voltage magnitudes and line active and reactive power
flows are compared by a full ac load flow analysis of
the proposed equivalent model and unreduced network.
Superscript R L F denotes that the results are calculated
by the load flow program for the reduced network;
Table 3
Extended equivalent lines to fictitious PV buses
From

To

R (in pu)

X (in pu)

MELKA I
DUNGAI
DIDCA1
BRLEA 1
MELKBI
MELKB2

EXTRA 1
EXTRA2
EXTRA3
EXTRA4
EXTRA5
EXTRA6

0
0
0
0
0
0

0.01192
606.815
0.00950
0.02257
0.10248
0.10268

K.L. Lo et al. /Electric Power Systems Research 42 (1997) 181 188

Table 4
Boundary equivalent power injections

u~

BUSBAR

P (MW)

Q (Mvar)

MELKA1
DUNGA1
DI DCA I
BRLEA1
MELKBI
M ELKB2

889.57959
1619.4813
- 258.6386
- 789.9861
16.91010
16.49737

114.091 l
-3.72315
-- 267.5182
340.4394
3.67155
4.96073

2 ~

/~

o[

,,,,,t,,,,,

187
~
....

, ,,

E= ~.~

P(MVV)
Q(Mvar)

,,,r

'~l

{I

-6
Number of Sample
Fig. 6. Maximum difference of line flow (CI).

superscript F L F denotes that the results are calculated

by the load flow program for the full size interconnected network. The errors of voltage magnitude are
defined as follows:

of line flows are defined as:

p I ~ L I = __ p F L F

AP%--~/

g'

-0
in%R a t i n ~

/)R.LF

A V,.% =

p,.~?

100%

(20)

The m a x i m u m errors in percentage o f the voltage magnitude for each case is illustrated in Fig. 5, where V~%

(C1) and ~ % (C2) correspond to Contingency 1 and

Contingency 2, respectively.
Some line flows are very light, and the resulting
errors will be very large if calculated using the comparison given by Eq. (20). For example, if the actual and
modelled active power flow of a line in per unit are 0.34
and 0.51, then the error will be 50%. In fact, this type
of large error is insignificant for security assessment.
The line flows are therefore examined using two other
techniques. The first is a simple comparison of their
actual and modelled difference as follows:
Apo

= pRLF
--~/

AQi,/=

~-0R L F

-pFLF
-d

(21)

~ /F L F

'~'/

__ ()FLF

~,i

Ratin,,
Lln%
=

100%

....

0.04

5. Conclusions

In this paper, an extended Ward equivalent approach

for on-line static security analysis has been presented
The proposed approach can update the equivalent
parameters, representing the topology changes of the
external system according to the line status in the buffer
zone. The results indicate that the new equivalent
model well represents the response of the external system to contingencies in the internal system and is
suitable for on-line use.

v%(c2)

".' 0.03

II,I

0.02
0.01

III

(24)

The line flow m a x i m u m errors in percentage based on

the line M V A rating are illustrated in Figs. 8 and 9, for
Contingency 1 and 2 respectively.
The two kinds of comparing results indicate that the
new approach has a high accuracy. In all of the test
cases, the m a x i m u m absolute error of bus voltage magnitudes is less than 0.04'70. The m a x i m u m and average
absolute differences of active power line flow are less
than 4.75 and 0.2 MW, respectively. The m a x i m u m and
average absolute difference of reactive power line flow
are less than 4.4 and 0.1 Mvar, respectively. The maxim u m absolute errors of active and reactive power line
flow are less than 3"/0 and 1.5% of the corresponding
line MVA rating, respectively.

~V%(C1)

0.05

.~

(23)

(22)

The maximum line flow differences of every case for

Contingency 1 and 2 are illustrated in Figs. 6 and 7,
respectively
However, this simple comparison of line flow difference does not give the relative importance of errors.
For example, an error of 30 M W on a line rated at 100
M W is not as significant as an error of 25 M W on a
line rated at 50 MW. So the second comparison is
modified by normalising the result based on the M V A
rating of each transmission line. The percentage errors
A

AQ%-

* 100%

I Ifl

I It

10

I1[11

13

16

P III

]g

I I [111

22

25

III

7, ~ -4

28

Number of Sample
Fig. 5. Maximum errors (%) of voltage magnitudes.

Number of Sample
Fig. 7. Maxinmm difference of line flow (C2).

188

K.L. Lo et al./Electric Power Systems Research 42 (1997) 181 188

1

[4]

-1
[5]

~E

-2

....

Q%(Cl)

-3

[6]
Number of Sample

Fig. 8. Maximum errors in percentage of line flows (C1).

P%(C2)

1
....

0.5
o
=..
U.I

E -0.5
E

'~(g
:S

[7]

[8]

Q%(C2)

a~

'1 '1 'r~'l I = , ]

"7 "'~

] ~1

] ~f#:~ ;X' /' .

[9]

-'3/5""'7 -9 "17 "/3J15 17"~9'21'2"3"25 27 2~)

-1

-v

./X_..,.--

[10]

-1.5
Number of Sample

[11]

Fig. 9. Maximum errors in percentage of line flows (C2).

[12]

Acknowledgements
[13]
T h e a u t h o r s w o u l d like t o t h a n k t h e N a t i o n a l G r i d
Company plc for the financial support and many technical discussions on this project.

[14]

References

[15]

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