Estimation of interarea electromechanical modes during ambient operation of the power systems using the RDT–ITD method

• The RDT–ITD was proposed to estimate the interarea modes in the power systems.
• The RDT–ITD was compared with RDT-Prony, NExT-ERA and N4SID.
• The RDT–ITD is robust to measurements noise, and has high computational efficiency.
• The RDT–ITD was validated using real PMU data from Sichuan power grid of China.

An accurate awareness of the properties of the interarea electromechanical oscillation modes is essential for the secure operation of the power systems. Previously, the Ibrahim time domain (ITD) method has been applied to estimate the interarea oscillation modes using ring-down signals caused by major disturbances (such as three phase faults). In this paper, through the combination of the random decrement technique (RDT) and the ITD method, the RDT–ITD method is proposed to estimate the interarea modes during ambient operation of the power systems, using random responses caused by random changes of the loads. The estimated parameters include the frequencies, damping ratios and mode shapes. Considering the fact that both the ambient excitations and the measurement noise are stochastic in nature, Monte Carlo simulations were conducted to evaluate the performances of the RDT–ITD method in a statistical way. Simulation results in the 16 machine nonlinear power system model, as well as comparison results with the RDT-Prony method, the NExT-ERA method and the Subspace method realized by N4SID (Numerical algorithm for Subspace State Space System Identification) show that the RDT–ITD method is promising in estimating the interarea modes during ambient operation conditions. The RDT–ITD method was also validated using real PMU measurements from Sichuan power grid of China.