Synchrophasor-Based Out-of-Step Prediction in Large Grids

Out-of-step (OOS) condition is a potential problem in the power system and uncontrolled islanding is one of the severe consequences of out-of-step condition which leads to cascaded tripping of the system. To avoid this undesired cascaded tripping, early prediction of out-of-step condition is essential before losing the synchronization of generators and between the system areas. Controlled islanding is the last emergency action that can be taken by splitting the system intentionally into coherent islands. Conventionally, OOS condition has been detected with impedance-based measurement techniques which have their own limitations. With the implementation of a wide-area measurement system with synchrophasor measurement units (PMUs) in the power system, it is now possible to measure the bus voltage angle at a much faster rate than with SCADA. In this paper, synchrophasor-based bus voltage angle measurement has been used for early prediction of OOS condition in power systems. A new algorithm has been formulated for both generator and tie lines based on the trajectory of first and second derivatives of the bus voltage phase angle for early detection of OOS condition. The prediction speed of proposed method is found to be between 5% and 70% of time to OOS, after disturbance clearance. The proposed algorithm has been mathematically formulated and evaluated with three benchmark systems in real-time simulation environment with an OPAL-RT real-time simulator and a HYPERSIM platform.