A new approach for online coherency identification in power systems based on correlation characteristics of generators rotor oscillations

• A new approach is proposed for identifying coherent generators by rotor correlation.
• The correlation characteristic of rotor oscillations is used as an index for coherency.
• Correlation of generators can be evaluated based on only on-line measurement data.
• The proposed approach does not need system modeling and is suitable for on line.

In this paper, a new approach for identifying coherent groups of generators in power systems based on the correlation coefficients between rotor angle/speed oscillations of generators is presented. The method uses a newly proposed clustering index based on the correlation coefficients of generators oscillations which is able to classify any number of generators into coherent groups. The proposed approach uses real time data of generators oscillations via VAMS/PMUs, so it is able to easily take into account the effect of system detailed modeling, generators and system controllers and type of events. The proposed correlation index evaluated from the real time behavior of generators in time-domain following disturbances are used to evaluate the degree of coherency between any pair of generators. The generators’ rotor angles and speeds can be obtained from synchronized measurements of system quantities using PMUs. Hence, the proposed method could be integrated into a wide-area measurement system enabling fast identification of coherent groups of generators. It is shown that by using COI of the aggregated in-phase coherent groups, the frequency of the inter-area mode can be evaluated. The proposed method is tested on the IEEE 39-bus with 10 generators and realistic power system of Iran with 405 generators.