New technique for area-based voltage stability support using flexible resources.

• Recent developments have led to an increase in power system flexible resources. • The use of such resources can meaningfully improve power systems voltage stability. • A novel distributed area-based voltage stability index is proposed. • Development of a direct perspective for flexible resources dispatch. • Prevention of early saturation in the improvement of voltage stability margin. Voltage stability margins of modernbulk power systems are significantly affected by renewable energy sources (RESs). The intermittency of these units can constantly move the critical location driving the system to voltage collapse along different coherence regions. Traditional approaches were not designed to deal with this scenario, typically providing a centralized actuation based on a system-wide perspective. In this sense, this paper proposes a novel area-based outlook to take advantage of the new possibilities enabled by power systems distributed controllable resources, e.g. flexible resources, to tackle this critical operational challenge. For this sake, a novel area-based sensitivity index, exploring both the network-wide sensitivity and the local characteristics of voltage collapse is proposed to determine the most effective buses for voltage support and their respective capability of increasing the system's load margin. Comparative case studies indicate the superior capability of the proposed direct method to deal with the new perspectives of modern power systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]