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VOL. 29, NO. 3, MAY 2014

Constrained Robust Estimation of Power System

State Variables and Transformer Tap Positions
Under Erroneous Zero-Injections
Robson C. Pires, Member, IEEE, Lamine Mili, Senior Member, IEEE, and Flavio A. Becon Lemos, Member, IEEE

AbstractThis paper presents an equally constrained robust

estimator of both the state and the transformer tap positions of
a power system able to withstand all types of outliers, including
bad leverage points and erroneous zero-injections. The statistical
robustness of the estimator stems from the application of the
Schweppe-type Huber GM estimator (SHGM) while its numerical
robustness originates from the use of an orthogonal iteratively
re-weighted least-squares algorithm together with the Van Loans
method for processing the equality constraints. The good performance of the new estimator, termed EC-SHGM estimator for
short, is demonstrated on a small test system and on the Brazilian
Southern power system with increasing size ranging from 139
buses to 1916 buses. It is shown that it exhibits superior convergence properties in all tested cases while the WLS method may
suffer from numerical instabilities or even divergence problems
when large weights are assigned to zero power injections modeling
false information.
Index TermsConfident zero bus injection and transformer tap
positions estimates, robust bad data processing of measurements
and zero power injection.

I. INTRODUCTION

ONSTRAINED power system state estimation aims at

building a reliable data base for power systems applications such as static and dynamic security analysis and energy
market pricing system, to name a few. If the zero injections have
too large residuals upon convergence of the state estimation algorithm, unacceptable errors in the power flow solutions may
result [1], which will invalidate the contingency analysis and
increase the vulnerability of the power system to catastrophic
failures.
Manuscript received March 18, 2013; revised June 20, 2013; accepted July
30, 2013. This work was supported in part by the Brazilian South State Electric Utility (CEEE) under contract CEEE/2003-No. 9920524 and the National
Science Foundation under the prime contract NSF EFRI-0835879, and the Subaward Agreement CR-19806-477991. Paper no. TPWRS-00298-2013.
R. C. Pires is with the Power and Energy System Engineering GroupGESis/
ISEE at Federal University of Itajub, Minas Gerais (MG), Brazil (e-mail:
robson@unifei.edu.br).
L. Mili is with the Bradley Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Northern Virginia Center, Virginia Tech, Falls Church, VA 22043 USA
(e-mail: lmili@vt.edu).
F. A. B. Lemos is with the Department of Electrical Engineering at Federal
University of Rio Grande do SulUFRS, Porto AlegreRio Grande do Sul
(RS), Brazil (e-mail: Flavio.Lemos@ieee.org).
Color versions of one or more of the figures in this paper are available online
at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TPWRS.2013.2284734

In power system state estimation, two methods have been

proposed to satisfy the equality constraints. These are 1) assigning large weights to the zero-injections, which are treated
as pseudo-measurements, and 2) formulating the problem as
a constrained optimization problem, which is usually solved
via the Lagrangian method [2]. Unfortunately, both approaches
suffer from convergence problems in the event where an
equality constraint is modeling incorrect information [3], for
example a wrong status of a load circuit breaker assumed to be
open whereas it is closed.
It turns out that all the literature dealing with constrained
power system state estimation is assuming perfect zero injection
information when dealing with solution methods. Specifically,
many papers concentrate either on modeling issues [4], [5] and
[6] or on addressing numerical ill-conditioning problems when
too large measurement weights are being assigned [7][10] and
[11]. A few papers focus on improving the statistical robustness
of the constrained state estimation to non-leverage outliers in
the measurements using statistical tests on the residuals [2], [4],
[12][14] and [15] or on the Lagrangian multipliers [16], [17].
Therefore, all the proposed methods suffer from convergence
problems under erroneous zero injection or bad leverage points.
Recall that a leverage point is a measurement whose projection
on the space spanned by the row vectors of the Jacobian matrix
is distant from the bulk of the measurements projections [18].
By contrast, the equality constrained state estimation method
proposed here, which is termed hereafter EC-SHGM for short,
is statistically and numerically robust to three types of outliers,
namely vertical outliers, bad leverage points, and erroneous
zero injections. Its statistical robustness stems from the use of
the Schweppe-type Huber GM-estimator [18], the so-called
SHGM, along with a new techniques inspired by [6] to cope
with erroneous injections. As for its numerical robustness, it
originates from the use of an orthogonal iteratively reweighted
least-squares (OIRLS) algorithm using Givens rotations [19]
and [20] together with the application of the generalized
singular value decomposition method initiated by Van Loan
[21] to deal with the equality constraints (see the Appendix).
In summary, the proposed OIRLS algorithm that implements
the EC-SHGM estimator exhibits the following interesting
properties:
1) It implements the Van Loans method [21] and the orthogonal transformations described in Golub [22] in a unified
manner;
2) It assigns, during the first iteration steps, weights of the
same order of magnitudes to both zero-injections and

0885-8950 2013 IEEE

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regular measurements. Then upon convergence of the

algorithm, it forces the residuals of all the zero-injections flagged as correct data by the EC-SHGM to very
small values by applying the Van Loans method. By this
way, ill-conditioning problems of the Jacobian matrix are
prevented while incorrect zero-injections together with
erroneous measurements are being suppressed.
This paper is organized as follows. Section II presents the
EC-SHGM problem formulation. Section III presents computational issues regarding the algorithm implementation. In
Section IV, numerical results are presented and discussed.
Finally, conclusions are outlined in Section V.
II. PROBLEM FORMULATION
In this section, the EC-SHGM estimator of a power system
state and transformer tap positions is developed and solved
using the OIRLS algorithm for numerical robustness together
with the iterative refinement weighting method to cope with
erroneous zero injections.
A. Equality Constrained State Estimation Problem
For an
power system with
on-load
tap changer transformers, the extended vector
has
entries. It is related to the -dimensional
vector containing tele- and pseudo-measurements through
, where
is an -dimensional vector-valued
nonlinear function and is an -dimensional vector assumed
to contain independent random variables with zero mean and
known covariance matrix,
. The vector
is estimated by using an EC-SHGM estimator that minimizes
an objective function given by
(1)

they need to be updated only if the measurement configuration

changes or the topology is modified.
In (2),
is an
-dimensional vector-valued nonlinear
function and is an
-dimensional vector containing constant real and reactive power injections to be exactly satisfied
(i.e., zero values for the zero injections). In our approach, the
equality constraints do not remain the same throughout the
iterations. Indeed, an equality constraint is suppressed or not
depending upon whether it is identified as outliers or not via the
EC-SHGM weight function,
Specifically,
if the -function is equal to one during the initial iterations of
the OIRLS algorithm, the associated constraint is deemed to be
valid and, therefore, is enforced in the final iterative step via
the Van Loans method [21], while if it is smaller than one, the
associated pseudo-measurement will be downweighted. This
method is described next.
B. Unconstrained SE Solution/Outer Loop
In the outer loop, the set of equality constraints are handled as
any other measurements, i.e., the corresponding weights are of
the same order of magnitude as those assigned to the measurements. Therefore, it is an unconstrained SHGM-estimator that
is being solved. It is a root of the necessary condition of optimatility derived from (1),
, which is expressed as
(5)
The foregoing equation is solved using the iteratively
reweighted least-squares (IRLS) algorithm because the latter
is less prone to numerical problems than Newtons method
[18], [23], [24]. This algorithm is derived by dividing and
multiplying
by
in (5) and using the definition of
yielding

subject to

(6)
(2)

Here

which, after algebraic simplifications, reduces to

is the Huber function defined as

for
for

and its first derivative with respect to

(7)
(3)
Now, putting (7) in a matrix form, we get

, is expressed as

for
for

(4)

In the previous equations, is a standardized residual defined

as
, where
is the th entry of the residual
vector,
and
. The latter
is a weight that is either equal to one up to a given threshold, ,
or to a decreasing function of the squared projection statistic,
, associated with the th-measurement. The reader is referred to [18] for a description of an efficient procedure for calculating PS. Note that it is the
that make the SHGM robust
against bad leverage points. Interestingly, they are calculated offline from the Jacobian matrix assessed at the flat voltage profile;

(8)
where
(9)
Let us replace
in (8) by its first Taylor series expansion
about
expressed as
(10)
which gives
(11)

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PIRES et al.: CONSTRAINED ROBUST ESTIMATION OF POWER SYSTEM STATE VARIABLES

or

The OIRLS outer loop solution is obtained by applying back

substitution to the upper part of (21), yielding
(12)

This is equivalent to obtaining the

where
solution for a linear system of redundant equations defined as
(13)
where
(14)
and
(15)
in (14) and (15) changes
Because the weight matrix
throughout the iterations, the matrix in (13) must be factored
at each iteration. This is the price to pay for suppressing outliers
during the updates of via
. The iterations
are stopped when
(16)
where
is the infinity norm.
In order to gain numerical robustness, we now apply Givens
rotations as described in [22]. To this end, we redefine the linear
set of equations given by (13) as follows:
(17)
Let us partition (17) into two subsets of equations, one associated with the measurements and the other one associated with
the zero-injections flagged as valid, yielding
(18)
and are matrices of dimension
and
, respectively, while
and are vectors partition of
dimension
and
, respectively. Also,
and are expressed as

Here,

(19)
where the parameter is a weight factor to be assigned to
and
.
Now, the augmented Jacobian matrix of the OIRLS algorithm
is given by
(20)

(22)
Here,
is the unitary upper triangular matrix that stems from
Givens rotations applied to defined in (20) as proposed by
[25]. By contrast, the algorithm proposed in [26] leads to a
non-unitary upper triangular matrix,
As for
, it is the corresponding updated vector in the right-hand-side of (18), once
the same orthogonal transformations are applied in (20).
In the solution of (13), the set of non-valid equality constraints are identified as those associated with small diagonal
weights of the matrix given in (15), say smaller than 0.099.
Note that this outlier identification must be employed over all
the iterations of the OIRLS outer loop solution while assigned
to the equality constraints is given the same value as the weights
assigned to the voltage measurements, which is
. By
this way, only the equality constraints flagged as valid are processed through the iterative refinement weighting method that is
described next.

C. Equality Constrained SE Solution/Inner Loop

The iterative refinement weighting method is proposed in [21]
for solving WLS estimator subject to equality constraints. However, it is here adapted for solving the EC-SHGM estimator
while using Van Loans algorithm. When using an iterative refinement to reach a solution, the augmented Jacobian matrix expressed in (20) does not require to be refactored. Therefore, only
the right-hand-side of the linear system of equations to be solved
in this step is updated. Consequently, the sequence of Givens rotations are stored instead of the orthogonal
matrix .
The iterative refinement weighting method aims at minimizing the Euclidean norm of residual vector partition
corresponding to the equality constraints. Although the minimization process is performed through an iterative scheme,
the algorithm presents fast convergence rate at each outer-loop
iteration. Once (22) is solved while the convergence criterion
given by (16) is not satisfied, the inner loop starts to apply
the Van Loans Method[21]. To minimize the zero-injection
deviations provided by the iterative refinement weighting algorithm , the value previously assigned to the parameter should
be replaced by another one, since it is lower than the highest
recommended value, i.e.,
, where
is processor
accuracy [27]. For instance, in our work
is picked
in double precision calculations. Essentially, this algorithm can
be summarized as follows:
1) After the inner loop counter has been initialized, i.e.,
, set
equal to
and update the parameter .
2) Check the convergence criterion given by

which, once factored by applying the Givens rotations algorithm

described in [25] or [26], results in

(23)

(21)

where the tolerance can be the same one used in the outer
loop and where
and
are the Euclidean and Infinity

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norms, respectively. If the criterion is satisfied, go to step

7. Otherwise, go to step 3.
3) Calculate
4) While applying Givens rotations, solve for
that
satisfies
(24)
which is the solution of
(25)

5)
6)
7)
8)

where is an orthonormal matrix

that stems
from the factorization of the Jacobian matrix defined in
(18) as:
, and
is the residual vector
related to the non-violated equality constraints.
Calculate
Increment inner loop counter:
and return to
step 2.
Increment outer loop counter:
and perform
next step.
Update
as
and return to the beginning of the iterative outer loop.
III. COMPUTATIONAL ISSUES

A. Ordering Schemes
When solving the EC-SHGM, the Jacobian matrix has to be
factored at each iteration, except in the inner loop. Techniques
employed for compact storage and row and column ordering
schemes are essential for an enhanced computational performance of Givens method [26]. The row ordering proposed
in [28] aims at minimizing the intermediary fill-in while the
column ordering [29] aims at minimizing the fill-in in the
unitary upper triangular matrix,
that is obtained from
the orthogonal Givens rotations [25]. Additionally, it is well
proven that the
matrix has the same pattern and entries as
the matrix that stems from the Cholesky decomposition when
both matrices result from the WLS solution [24]. This is the
main reason for applying the above ordering schemes on the
gain matrix,
, so it can be symbolically factored. These
strategies decrease the computing time during the numerical
factorization of the augmented Jacobian Matrix [30], as it is
shown in (20).
B. Iteration Strategy for Convergence
The iterative process implementing the EC-SHGM estimator
requires a starting point that is not too far from a reliable solution. For instance, if the iterative solution begins from the flat
start condition, then most of the corresponding residual magnitudes may be greater than the break-even-point, . Thus, the
related measurements will be strongly downweighted. The recommended strategy is to perform the first iteration using a WLS
estimator, and then switch to the EC-SHGM estimator. This procedure takes 3 to 5 iterations to attain convergence. However,
special care should be taken with the weights assigned to the

pseudo-tap-position measurements placed on an on-load-tapchanger (OLTC) transformer whose tap position is modeled as
an unknown parameter. This important issue is discussed next.
C. Estimating the Tap Position of the OLTC Transformers
The OLTC model implemented in this work follows that presented in [31]. Regarding the choice of the number and the
placement of the measurements for successfully estimating the
tap positions of OLTC transformers, the reader is referred to
[32]. To enhance the measurement redundancy and improve the
convergence rate of the algorithm, phasor measurement units
(PMUs) may be used [33]. As for the iterative procedure, the
implementation of the following heuristics is recommended:
1) Take as an initial value the nominal tap position for each
OLTC. This procedure allows us to reduce the magnitude
of the residuals of the associated voltage and active and
reactive power flow measurements;
2) To avoid instability of the iterative process, place pseudomeasurements on the tap positions to be estimated, set them
equal to the nominal values and pick their standard deviations equal to one-third of the tap range.
IV. NUMERICAL RESULTS
The proposed methodology is implemented in a program developed in C++ Builder Version 6.0. It makes use of an object-oriented framework [34][36]. Besides the demonstration
performed on an example system depicted in Fig. 1, the OIRLS
algorithm is executed on a real-life system of about 150 buses.
Also, its performance is evaluated on the Brazilian Southern
power systems with increasing size of 340, 730 and 1916 buses.
In all the simulations carried out on these systems, standard deviations of 0.1% and 1% are respectively assigned to the voltages and the power measurements. To model the uncertainty in
the measurements, Gaussian errors with zero mean and given
variances are added to the corresponding true values obtained
from load flow calculations. Gross measurements and erroneous
zero injections are included in the measurement set by replacing
the associated good values with large values.
A. EC-SHGM Estimator Applied to an Example System
The one-line diagram of an example system, including the
measurement configuration identified by means of bullets
placed at each measurement point, is shown in Fig. 1, while
the corresponding network parameters in pu are presented in
Table I
In this example, two OLTC transformers are included, whose
models are given in [31]. Therefore, there are 9 states variables
and 2 tap positions to be estimated. There are also four equality
constraints associated with zero power injections (active/reactive) on Buses #3 and 4. Two bad data are included in the measurement set. Firstly, a reactive power injection is set to zero at
Bus #3 whereas in the field it has a non-zero value, which results in one topological error. Secondly, a gross error is added
by changing the sign of the reactive power injection measurement at Bus #5. This case simulates an inversion of the current winding polarity following a measurement calibration procedure.

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are bad leverage points, are correctly identified and suppressed.

Regardless whether the reactive power injection at Bus #3 is
wrongly set to zero or the reactive power injection at Bus #5 is
incorrectly assigned a negative value, the state estimator solution points out that there is actually a shunt capacitor connected
to Bus #3, and that Bus #5 is actually supplying the network
with reactive power. These bad data are severely downweighted
during the iterative solution; they are the main cause for the
large number of iterations performed in the inner loop. Usually,
if only true information is modeled as equality constraints, the
OIRLS outer/inner loop algorithms require on average 3/1 iterations to converge. Moreover, the deviations of the active power
injections at Buses #3 and 4 and on the reactive power injection
at Bus #4 are reduced to very small values. These results show
the effectiveness of EC-SHGM estimator.
Note that for the estimation results shown in Table II, the
tap positions are modeled as unknown variables while those
shown in Table III, they are modeled as pseudo-measurements.
In both cases, the standard-deviation assigned to them complies
with heuristic #1 and 2 and their weights remain unchanged
throughout the iterations.
Fig. 1. Online diagram of the 5-bus system.

TABLE I
PARAMETER VALUES OF THE 5-BUS SYSTEM

TABLE II
ESTIMATION RESULTS FOR THE 5-BUS SYSTEM

Table II presents the estimated variables throughout the iterations, except for the first one where the WLS iterative solution
begins from the flat state condition and the tap setting state variable starts from the nominal position. The OIRLS outer/inner
loop counter, viz.
, are indicated in the headings of Table II.
Table III presents measured and estimated values along with
the weighting factors and the chi-squared indices
at each
step of the iterative process. All underlined measurements are
leverage points. As observed, both bad data,
and , which

B. EC-SHGM Estimator Applied to Power Systems Networks

Table IV summarizes the monitoring features of large-scale
power system networks used for evaluating the EC-SHGM estimator.
In this work, a network of about 150 buses is used as a benchmark system. The corresponding historical data are snapshots of
stored digital and analog measurements taken from the network
every minute from January 2003 to July 2007. For instance, in
Table IV the data of this system correspond to the snapshot taken
at 04:00 PM on July 4, 2007. The other 340-, 730-, and 1916-bus
systems are used to evaluate the computational performance of
the implemented algorithm.
The benchmark system consists of two interconnected asynchronous subsystems belonging to neighboring countries, one
subsystem stretches in Argentina and Uruguay and operates at
50 Hz and the other one stretches in Brazil and operates at 60
Hz. Unlike other applications, power flows over back-to-back
DC links are modeled as equality constraints of power injections because DC link primary control mode is a constant power
control [37]. Specifically, the interconnections between the Argentinian and the Uruguayan grid and between the Argentinian
and the Brazilian grid are made through a frequency-converter
station with a maximum scheduled interchanged power around
50 MW. As for the interconnection between the Brazilian
and the Uruguayan grids, it is made through the Livramento
frequency-converter station with a maximum scheduled interchanged power around 70 MW. Power interchanged via these
converters are used to meet local load seasonally.
The performance of the EC-SHGM estimator was also evaluated on a real-life power system of about 150 buses of an industrial district located in the city of Porto Alegre in Rio Grande do
Sul, a Brazilian Southern State. Fig. 2 displays the measured and
estimated values of the voltage magnitude and real and reactive
power at Bus #1258 over 288 snapshots recorded every 5 min
from 00:00 AM to 11:55 PM on July 4, 2007. The infinite norms
of the residual vectors for , , and are 0.01356, 0.00988 and

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TABLE III
METERED VALUES AND ESTIMATES FOR THE 5-BUS SYSTEM

TABLE IV
CHARACTERISTICS OF THE BRAZILIAN POWER SYSTEMS

TABLE V
PERFORMANCE INDICES FOR THE BRAZILIAN POWER SYSTEMS

, respectively. All these values are within

standard deviation of the residuals.
Table V shows various performance indices of the OIRLS
algorithm evaluated for the Brazilian 159-, 340-, 730-, and
1916-bus power systems. These indices are the numbers of
iterations of the outer and inner loop along with the average
and the maximum values of the active and reactive power

injection absolute deviations,

and
, at selected buses. The bus where the maximum
deviation has occurred is also indicated. The largest deviation
value showed in the table is the reactive power injection at
STA-ESUL 230-kV bus. It was induced by a gross error on
STA 525-kV voltage, which is a neighboring bus where an
equality constraint is imposed as zero reactive power injection
(AL2 230-kV) whereas in the field, actually, an equivalent
shunt reactor compensator of 77.1 MVAr (3
25 MVAr) is

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PIRES et al.: CONSTRAINED ROBUST ESTIMATION OF POWER SYSTEM STATE VARIABLES

Fig. 2. Measured (in blue) and estimated (in red) values recorded over one day of (a) the voltage, (b) the real power injection, (c) the reactive power injection at
Bus #1258 of the power system of the industrial district located in the city of Porto Alegre/Rio Grande Do Sul.

connected.The main reason for the large number of iterations

required to reach the solution is the existence of a large number
of gross errors to be suppressed. Note that if an unconstrained
SHGM is carried out, the convergence is not attained.

Finally, Table VI presents the computing times of the OIRLS

algorithm for the four test systems. Each of these times is averaged over different hardware platforms. Also, the table indicates
overhead times for up and down allocated memory. As it can be

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TABLE VI
NUMBER OF ITERATIONS OF THE OUTER/INNER LOOP AND COMPUTING TIMES IN SECONDS

observed, the computing times of the OIRLS algorithm that implements an EC-SHGM estimator are compatible with real-time
applications, even for very large systems. Notice that it may also
be applied in study mode with additional features that requires
heavier computing times.
V. CONCLUSION
A reliable orthogonal iterative algorithm for solving a robust
equality-constrained state estimator has been proposed. It estimates power system state variables and transformer tap positions under erroneous zero-power injections. Simulations on
large-scale systems showed that the proposed method has the
ability to suppress gross errors corrupting both measurements
and zero injections, be they in position of leverage or not. Moreover, it presents high convergences rates with low number of
iterations and small computing times. These features can be
further enhanced if a fast decoupled OIRLS version is implemented.
APPENDIX
PRINCIPLES OF THE VAN LOANS METHOD

,
where
and
As shown in [27], the exact solution
to the WLS problem given by (1) and (2) is expressed as
(28)
while the solution using WLS estimator in the problem expressed in (26) is given by
(29)
and
when
Obviously,
depends
on the value assigned to .
To get small errors for zero-power injections, must be assigned large values. Following the recommendations made in
[26], in this applications is set around
while the
measurement weights are set around
. Note that for
other parameter values, numerical instabilities may occur.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT

One way to satisfy the equality constraints in power system

state estimation is to assign large weights to the zero-injections,
which are treated as pseudo-measurements. An approximated
solution for this problem can be reached by solving the following WLS unconstrained problem:
(26)
where
and are defined as in (18) and and are expressed
as in (19).
Applying a generalized singular value decomposition as suggested in [21], we get

(27)

Prof. R.C. Pires gratefully acknowledges the contributions

of N. Dallocchio for his work on the original version of the
VDTap program that provides estimates of both the state variables and the transformer tap positions of a power system. This
program was developed as part of Dallocchios Bachelor and
MS research work [36] carried out when he was enrolled in the
UNIFEI Electrical Engineering program at ISEE/GESis.
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Robson C. Pires (S98A99M02) received the

B.Sc. degree in 1983, the M.Sc. degree in 1989,
and the D.Sc. degree in 1998, all in electrical
engineering, from Fluminense Federal University
(UFF)RJ; Federal University of Itajub (UNIFEI)
MG, and Federal University of Santa Catarina
(UFSC) SC, respectively, all in Brazil.
In 1996 (January to July), he did part of his
graduate program at The Bradley Department of
Electrical and Computer Engineering VTech,
Blacksburg, VA, USA. Since 1987 he has been
with the Power System and Energy Institute (ISEE) at UNIFEI, where he is
currently an Associate Professor. His research interests include electromagnetic
compatibility (EMC) issues, analysis and control of large power systems and
robust state estimation network application.

Lamine Mili (SM90) received the electrical engineering diploma from EPFL, Lausanne, Switzerland,
in 1976, and the Ph.D. degree from the University of
Liege, Liege, Belgium, in 1987.
He is a Professor of electrical and computer
engineering at Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, VA, USA.
His research interests include robust statistics, power
system dynamics and control and risk management
of critical infrastructures. He has five years of
industrial experience with the electric power utility,
STEG, where he worked as an engineer in the
planning department and the Test and Metering Laboratory from 1976 until
1981. He is co-founder and co-editor of the International Journal of Critical
Infrastructures, http://www.inderscience.com/jhome.php?jcode=ijcis.

Flavio A. Becon Lemos (S94M01) received the

B.Sc. degree in electrical engineering in 1988 from
the Federal University of Santa Maria UFSM, and
the M.Sc. degree in 1994 and the Ph.D. degree in
2000 in electrical engineering from the Federal University of Santa Catarina UFSC, respectively.
During 19961997, he was a fellow research
at Brunel University, U.K. He was with the State
Electrical Utility in Porto Alegre-RS, from 1988 to
1992. Currently, he is an Adjunct Professor in the
Department of Electrical Engineering at Federal
University of Rio Grande do Sul UFRS, Porto Alegre, Brazil. His main
research interests include power systems dynamics, voltage coordinated control
and stability, and power system operation.