Deterministic security criteria provide a degree of security that may be insufficient under some operating conditions and excessive for others. To determine an appropriate level of security, one should perform a probabilistic cost/benefit analysis that balances the cost of the security margin against its benefits, i.e., the expected societal cost of the avoided outages. This paper shows how a previously published method based on Monte Carlo simulation can be enhanced to take into account time-dependent phenomena (TDP) such as cascade tripping of elements due to overloads, malfunction of the protection system, and potential power system instabilities. In addition, the importance of using failure rates that reflect the weather conditions is discussed. Studies based on the South-Western part of the transmission network of England and Wales demonstrate the validity of the models that have been developed.

Aspects of terrestrial microgrids and ship power systems are examined. The work exposes a variety of technical synergies from these two power systems to effectively advance their technologies. Understanding their overlap allows congruent efforts to target both systems; understanding their differences hinders conflict and redundancy in early-stage design. The paper concludes by highlighting how an understanding of both systems can reduce the investment in research resources.

Since phasor measurement unit (PMU) was invented, there has been growing interest in developing methodologies for finding the minimum number of PMUs for complete system observability. The methods for the PMU placement must consider the fact that the network topology may change when the power system is affected by a contingency event. Therefore the PMU placement problem can be stated as finding the minimum number of PMUs for complete system observability considering the failure probability of transmission lines. In this study, the authors propose a new reliability‐ based model for the contingency constrained PMUs placement. Initially, a methodology, that considers the probability of failure of the power system components, is proposed. Next, an algorithm is presented for selecting the minimal number of PMUs and their locations to monitor the system under normal operation and the most credible contingencies. A probabilistic index is introduced to select a desired level of reliability for the wide‐area monitoring system. Finally, the availability of PMU measuring channels is incorporated in the model, so more realistic and useful results can be obtained. The problem is formulated and solved as a binary integer linear programming model and tested on the IEEE 9‐bus, IEEE 57‐bus and RTS96 test systems.

Since phasor measurement units (PMU) were invented, there has been growing interest in developing methodologies for improving monitoring, protection and control of power systems in real time. In this study, the authors propose a new methodology, based on graph modelling, to identify coherent groups of generators in a real‐time fashion. The coherent groups are identified with instantaneous values measured from the system through PMUs, and the methodology needs neither setting the number of desired groups nor defining a threshold value since it is based on coupling factors between generators. Moreover, it is proposed a new method for the online definition of areas for islanding when this action is required as the latest emergency control method. The methodology assigns the non‐generation buses to the previously found generators coherent groups considering three criteria: electrical distance to the group of generators, topology, and operational constraints, which are verified by mean of an optimal power flow. The methodology is tested on the IEEE 39‐bus and IEEE 118‐bus test systems. Results show that the real‐time identification of coherent groups and the definition of areas allow the development of islanding strategies with promising results.

Misoperation and hidden failures of protections in electric power systems have been recognized as a contributing factor to power system cascading outages and catastrophic events. For that reason, it is important to develop new tools to study the sequence of the operation of protections given a contingency in the system. This paper proposes a methodology for modeling the operating sequences of protections in the IEEE 493 system and a meshed transmission system using generalized stochastic petri nets (GSPNs), contemplating main and back-up protections, and specially how they interact.

In this paper graph theory is used to identify coherent groups of generators and to locate PMUs for Inter-Area monitoring. Initially, the problem of identifying coherent groups is presented as a graphical problem. Then, three graph clustering methods are implemented to group coherent generators. Finally, when the electric network is separated in coherent regions, a placement of PMU based on centrality criteria is proposed. This can be used as a first stage in the implementation of a plan of monitoring in a large electric power system. Dynamic simulations and phasorial representation of simulations are done with the reduced order equivalent of the interconnected New England system (NETS) and New York power system (NYPS). The results show that graph theory can be applied to identify coherent groups and to locate PMUs to Inter-area monitoring.