Toward a More Reliable System for Contingency Selection in Static Security Analysis of Electric Power Systems

The reliable supply of electricity plays a key role in the contemporary way of life. In order to provide more benefits to the population, electric networks are getting bigger to produce more energy. This growth, while necessary, brings problems in operation and maintenance, since the networks are more complex. This complexity requires that network security analysis should be performed in real time to avoid decision errors when disconnecting a device from the network or predicting the possibility of operating output from an undersized device. In this article, an intelligent system for contingency selection in the static security analysis of electric power systems is proposed. The severity of contingencies indication is the first step to develop control actions and maintain the system operation integrity. We propose and evaluate the contingency selection as a combinatorial optimization problem, employing an ACO metaheuristic to model the situation. The system is evaluated over the IEEE 30-bus network and a real 810-bus network, considering double outages of branches. Results show an accuracy close to five-nines for severing contingencies.