2013 Annual IEEE India Conference (INDICON)

Power system contingency ranking using Newton

Raphson load flow method
Pudi Sekhar

Prof. Sanjeeb Mohanty

Dept. of Electrical Engineering

National Institute of Technology
Rourkela, India

Dept. of Electrical Engineering

National Institute of Technology
Rourkela, India

Abstract The Power system security is one of the significant

aspects, where the proper action needs to be taken by the
operational engineers for the unseen contingency. Therefore the
contingency analysis is key for the power system security. The
contingency ranking using the performance index is a method for
the line outages in a power system, which ranks the highest
performance index line first and proceeds in a descending
manner based on the calculated PI for all the line outages. This
helps to take the prior action to keep the system secure. In the
present work the Newton Raphson load flow method is used for
the power system contingency ranking for the line outage based
on the Active power and Voltage performance index. The
ranking is given by considering the overall performance index,
which is the summation of Active power and voltage performance
index. The proposed method is tested on a standard-5 bus system
Keywords Power system security; Contingency ranking;
Newton -Raphson method; Performance index

I.

INTRODUCTION

The Power system security is an important aspect from the

point of view of power system operation and planning. The
Security assessment is necessary for the power system
operational engineers and its importance is presented in [1-2]
The Security assessment is the process of identifying the
operating limits violation, where it helps in taking prior steps to
keep the system secure. It provides the system condition and
behavior under possible contingencies. Therefore the
information obtained can be used for secure operation and
planning. The Power system is a complex network consisting
of numerous equipments. The failure of any of the equipment
during its operation harms the reliability of the system and
hence leading to the outages, which influences the security of
the power system.
The application of AC power flow methods in outage cases
have been discussed by authors in [3]. In Ref. [4-5], the
authors presented how the line flows is influenced for generator
and line outages using distribution factors. In [6] the authors
discussed how the computational problems can be reduced for
contingency screening using the complete bounding method.
For contingency evaluation the authors in [7] introduced the
method of concentric relaxation. For quick power flow
solutions, the zero mismatch method is proposed in [8]. The
selection of weighting coefficients for performance indices for
contingency ranking has been presented in [9].The combination

of linear sensitivities and eigen value analysis for voltage

contingency ranking has been presented in [10]. The authors in
[11] discussed the methods available for contingency screening
and ranking. The use of an iterative method to calculate Eigen
values under outage condition for contingency ranking is
proposed by authors in [12]. Yilang chen et al in [13], proposed
direct ranking method, in which performance index for a
contingency case do not require post contingency voltages at
each bus for ranking. In [14] the authors used decoupled load
flow and compensation method to obtain Post outage voltages
and ranking is given based on performance index.
The outage can be defined as a temporary suspension of
operation. Therefore the contingency is defined as a future
event (outage) or circumstance that is possible but cannot be
predicted with certainty.
Ejebe and Wollenberg brought in the contingency
ranking concept, in which the contingencies are arranged in
descendent order by considering the performance index [15].
The contingency analysis comprise of the simulation of
each contingency for the power system model under study. It
consists the following steps:
1) Contingency creation: It includes a set of probable
contingencies that may takes place in a power
system. This step focuses on setting up contingencies
list.
2) Contingency selection: This step involves choosing
contingencies which are severe, among the available
list of contingencies that leads to bus voltage and
power limit violations. This step reduce the
contingency list by excluding lowest severity
contingencies. The performance index is used to
measure the severity
3) Contingency evaluation: This step comprises of
taking the control action to minimize or eliminate the
consequences of contingency.
Therefore the power system planning and operational
engineers need to focus on investigating the consequences of
outages based on their severity. The performance index (PI) is
used to gauge the severity and rank those contingencies based

978-1-4799-2275-8/13/$31.00 2013 IEEE

on their severities. The present work is organized as follows:

the Section-II deals with the algorithm of NR method and the
Section-III discusses the contingency ranking approach.
Whereas the Section-IV deals with results and discussion.
Finally Concluding remarks are provided in Section-V. In the
present work, for a standard 5-bus system, line outage case is
considered and the load flows are calculated using NR method
[16] for each outage and severity index called performance
indices (PI) are calculated. The severity of line outages is
ranked based on the performance index.
II.

THE ALGORITHM

The Algorithm for Newton Raphson load flow method

involves the following six steps:
[1]
[2]
[3]
[4]
[5]
[6]

Read the bus data and line data

Form the Y-bus matrix
Calculate real and reactive powers and power residuals
Calculate the Jacobian matrix J
Calculate the new voltage magnitudes and phase angles
The process is continued until the power residuals are less
than specified accuracy
III.

Where,
|Vi| ---- Voltage magnitude corresponding to bus i
|Visp| ---- Specified voltage magnitude corresponding to bus i
Vilim ---- Voltage deviation limit
n ---- Penalty function (=1)
NB ----Number of buses in the system
W ---- Real non-negative weighting factor (= 1)
The bus voltages are influenced by the reactive power
produced by the generating units and PIV gives the severity of
abnormal voltages until the reactive power lie in the limits.
Under contingency case the reactive power may approach the
limits, and in this scenario the AC load flow computes the bus
voltages by considering the reactive power limits and thus
voltage violation is observed from their actual voltage at the
generator buses. In this case the voltage study during
contingency involves the generators reactive power
constraints.
The established formula is:
NB
PIP = W 2n
i=1

Qi

CONTINGENCY RANKING APPROACH

The use of AC power flow solution in contingency analysis is

that it gives active, reactive power flows and magnitudes of
bus voltage. In the present work of power system contingency
ranking approach, line outage case has been considered and
the ranking is given based on the severity measured using the
performance index. These indices are computed using the load
flow methods for each contingency. Based on the performance
index obtained the contingencies are ranked starting with the
highest value of PI.
The performance indices [15] which are widely used are,

)|Vi| |Vi sp|

V
i

lim

2n

N
2n
G
max
+ W 2n Q Q
i
i
i =1

---- Reactive power at bus i

max

Qi

---- Reactive power limit at bus i

NG
W

---- number of generating units

---- Real non-negative weighting factor (= 1)

In the present work, performance index PIVQ is not given

preference. The proposed approach includes PIP and PIV.
The Fig. 1, shows the flow chart for the overall
performance index based power system contingency ranking.

Active Power performance index (PIP): This index is used to

measure the degree of line over loads

)(

NL
PI P = W 2 n Pl
l =1

Pl

max 2 n

(1)

Where,
Pl and Plmax ---- MW flow and MW capacity of line l
---- Number of lines of the system
NL
W
---- Real non-negative weighting factor (= 1)
N
---- Penalty function (=1)
Pl

max

= Vi *V j

Where,
Vi
Vj
X

)X

(2)

---- Voltage at bus i by NR load flow

---- Voltage at bus j by NR load flow
---- Reactance of the line connecting bus i and bus j

Voltage performance index (PIV): This is the index which

determines the out of limit bus voltages.
NB
PIv = W 2 n
i =1

) |V i| |Vi sp |

lim
i

2n

(3)

(4)

Fig. 1.

Flow chart for the contingency ranking

IV.

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

The load flow analysis is carried out using the NR

method to find out the PI under the MATLAB environment.
The entire study has been carried out on Standard 5-bus
system.
A. 5-Bus System
The system shown in Fig. 2, consists of one slack bus and
four load buses. These are connected with seven transmission
lines. The voltages and active power flows for the precontingency case are presented in Fig. 2.

Now the load flow is performed for a single outage and by

using the parameters from load flow both the voltage and
active power performance indices are computed for the single
outage. The Fig. 3, shows the line-1 outage and corresponding
power flows and voltages. The pre and post contingency bus
voltages and active power flows are shown in Table I and
Table II respectively. Using (1) and (3) active power and
voltage performance index for each outage are calculated
which are shown in Table III, along with the contingency
ranking.
TABLE I.

BUS VOLTAGES IN THE PRE AND POST CONTINGENCY STATE

(LINE-1 OUTAGE)

Bus
Number
1
2
3
4
5

Pre-contingency voltage
(pu)
1.060
1.047
1.024
1.024
1.018

TABLE II.
Line
1
2
3
4
5
6
7

Fig. 2. Pre-contingency state of 5-bus system

ACTIVE POWER FLOWS IN THE PRE AND POST CONTINGENCY

STATE (LINE-1 OUTAGE)

Start
bus
1
1
2
2
2
3
4

TABLE III.

Post-contingency voltage
(pu)
1.060
0.902
0.896
0.890
0.872

End
bus
2
3
3
4
5
4
5

Pre contingency
power flow (pu)
0.889
0.407
0.247
0.279
0.548
0.189
0.063

Post Contingency
power flow (pu)
0
1.4326
0.1536
0.0401
0.3909
0.6678
0.2221

PERFORMANCE INDICES AND CONTINGENCY RANKING

Outage line
number

PIP

PIV

1
2
3
4
5
6
7

0.1074
0.0418
0.0418
0.0451
0.1212
0.0406
0.0417

1.8052
0.2390
0.3194
0.3128
0.2818
0.3387
0.3548

Overall
Performance
Index(OPI)
1.9126
0.2808
0.3612
0.3578
0.4030
0.3793
0.3965

Ranking
1
7
5
6
2
4
3

The Table III, shows that the overall performance index is

high for line-1 outage and therefore it is ranked first
V.

CONCLUSION

The results show that the calculation of the performance

indices gives a measure of severity of possible line outage
contingencies in the system. The highest value of indices
provides the severity of the outage and has the maximum
possibility of making the system parameters to go beyond the
operating limits. The severity of the particular outage helps the
power system operation engineers to take prior action;
therefore it helps as a guide to run reliable power system.
Apart from this approach the contingency analysis can also be
carried out using the neural networks and the fuzzy logic.
Fig. 3.

Post-contingency state of 5-bus system (Line-1 Outage)

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