Power System Stability: How to Prevent Blackouts in the Open Access Era

A two-day short course
Course Faculty: Prabha Kundur and Carson Taylor

In the summer of 1996, two major system disturbances occurred in the Western System Coordinating Council (WSCC) that resulted in partial blackouts and cost utilities and their customers several million dollars. Potential stability problems are still the most critical impediments to maximizing power transfers across system interconnections and must be considered in available transfer capability. Until recently, stability studies conducted by electric utilities focused primarily on transient angle stability. However, with the changing characteristics of power systems, other system stability problems, particularly voltage instability and undamped inter-area oscillations, have emerged as greater sources of concern. This was made abundantly clear from these two 1996 disturbances.

Maintaining system stability in a deregulated utility environment will present new challenges, as power systems are operated with a greater degree of uncertainty and a lower level of conservatism than in the past. If stability problems are accurately identified and properly mitigated, the economic gains to be realized can be enormous.

This two-day course, presented by two prominent experts in the field, will cover the different stability problems that are encountered by dispatchers and schedulers, as well as state-of-the-art analysis and mitigation techniques. Both presenters have written books on this subject for the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI), and are skilled at presenting these complex issues in a straightforward format.

Course Topics

Introduction

Angle Stability

Frequency Stability

Voltage Stability

1996 WSCC Disturbances

Power System Planning and Design Practices

On-line Dynamic Security Analysis

What You Will Learn

Who Should Attend

This course is for schedulers, dispatchers, power marketers, entry level power engineers, and other personnel involved in marketing power in the deregulated environment.

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revised 10/10/01