A fast approach to transient stability estimation using an improved potential energy boundary surface method

In this paper, a new fast algorithm to perform online transient stability assessment (TSA) in a power system is proposed. The TSA is concerned with finding the critical clearing time (CCT), the stability limit, for a specified fault. The method possesses the merits of the fast speed of the potential energy boundary surface method and the accuracy of the conventional time domain simulation technique. To expedite the algorithm, an efficient stopping criterion for postfault trajectory simulation is developed. Examples are given to show the problems of integration stopping criteria published in recent papers and how they are tackled. Extensive test results on several systems, including the 10-generator New England system, the 17-generator Iowa system and the IEEE 50-generator system, are reported.