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In 1895, the Niagara Falls Power Company installed an early largescale polyphase generating station at Niagara Falls, New York. Later named Adams Plant No. 1, power was first produced in 1895. Ten years later, a total of six ac-generating stations were in operation on both sides of the U.S.?Canadian border. The rapid development of power generation at Niagara Falls was in no small part a result of the burgeoning electrochemical industry.

The opening lines of the foreword in the first edition (1942) of the Westinghouse Electric a Manufacturing Company's Electrical Transmission and Distribution Reference Book (Figure 1) start in this way: Some twenty years ago a well known electrical engineer was ordered by his physician to take a complete rest.

On August 14, 2003, a cascading outage of transmission and generation facilities in the North American Eastern Interconnection resulted in a blackout of most of New York state as well as parts of Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, and Ontario, Canada. On September 23, 2003, nearly four million customers lost power in eastern Denmark and southern Sweden following a cascading outage that struck Scandinavia. Days later, a cascading outage between Italy and the rest of central Europe left most of Italy in darkness on September 28. These major blackouts are among the worst power system failures in the last few decades. The Power System Stability and Power System Stability Controls Subcommittees of the IEEE PES Power System Dynamic Performance Committee sponsored an all day panel session with experts from around the world. The experts described their recent work on the investigation of grid blackouts. The session offered a unique forum for discussion of possible root causes and necessary steps to reduce the risk of blackouts. This white paper presents the major conclusions drawn from the presentations and ensuing discussions during the all day session, focusing on the root causes of grid blackouts. This paper presents general conclusions drawn by this Committee together with recommendations based on lessons learned.

The problem of defining and classifying power system stability has been addressed by several previous CIGRE and IEEE Task Force reports. These earlier efforts, however, do not completely reflect current industry needs, experiences and understanding. In particular, the definitions are not precise and the classifications do not encompass all practical instability scenarios. This report developed by a Task Force, set up jointly by the CIGRE Study Committee 38 and the IEEE Power System Dynamic Performance Committee, addresses the issue of stability definition and classification in power systems from a fundamental viewpoint and closely examines the practical ramifications. The report aims to define power system stability more precisely, provide a systematic basis for its classification, and discuss linkages to related issues such as power system reliability and security.

For original paper by P. Kundur, J. Paserba and S. Vitet see CIGRE/IEEE PES International Symposium, Montreal, Que., Canada, 8-10 Oct. 2003 and for discussion by Olof Samuelsson and Sture Lindahl see ibid., vol.21, no.1, p.466, Feb. 2006.