Analysis of a new voltage stability pointer for line contingency ranking in a power network

Improper management of reactive power in a power network could lead to voltage instability. This paper presents a well-detailed study on voltage instability due to violation of power equilibrium in a power network and introduces a new voltage stability pointer (NVSP). The proposed NVSP is developed from a reduced 2-bus interconnected network to predict the sensistivity of voltage stability to reactive power variation. The simulation results from MATLAB were evaluated on IEEE 14-bus test system. The contingency ranking was achieved by varying the reactive power on the load buses to its maximum loading limit. The maximum reactive power point was taken at each load bus and the critical lines were ranked according to their vulnerability to voltage collapse. The results were compared with other notable voltage stability indices. The results prove that the NVSP is an essential tool in predicting voltage collapse.