Investigation of an Effective Strategy for Computing Small-Signal Security Margins.

As the operational conditions of power systems change, the operating point (i.e., the equilibrium point) may approach the small-signal security boundary. Given the current operating condition as well as the load and generation variations, it is meaningful to compute the small-signal security margin (SSSM). In this paper, an effective method that consists of three stages to compute the SSSM is proposed and examined. In the first stage, which is an estimation stage, the critical mode crossing the damping ratio line is estimated. The SSSM is then computed by a test function or by a direct method in the second stage, which is a correction stage. The computational results are then verified in the third stage, which is a verification stage. Numerical results on a 10-machine and a 160-machine system (with the state variables being 1600) show that the proposed three-stage method is efficient and promising. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]