Long-Term Voltage Stability Assessment of an Integrated Transmission Distribution System

TL;DR

This paper emphasizes the importance of integrated transmission-distribution voltage stability assessment, revealing that distribution systems can limit overall loadability and advocating for realistic co-simulation frameworks.

Contribution

It introduces a PV curve superimposition approach for integrated VSA and demonstrates the limitations of separate T-VSA and D-VSA methods.

Findings

Distribution system can limit overall system loadability

Separate T-VSA and D-VSA are unreliable for true load margin estimation

Integrated analysis is essential for accurate long-term VSA

Abstract

Long-term voltage stability assessment (VSA) of independent transmission (T-VSA) and distribution (D-VSA)systems have been studied since long to estimate load margins. However, their impacts on each other have been neglected due to simplified assumptions i.e. in transmission systems, loads are assumed to be aggregated, and in distribution systems, substation bus voltage is assumed to be constant. This work investigates the VSA of integrated transmission-distribution (TD-VSA) using PV curve superimposition approach and reveals the possibility that the overall system loadability may be limited by the distribution system rather than the transmission system. In this paper, we analyze why T-VSA and D-VSA are not reliable enough to estimate true load margin of the overall system. The analysis has been verified on an integrated test system in different scenarios with and without DER penetration. Overall, the paper points out the need for integrated analysis and further builds a case why it is essential to develop a realistic co-simulation framework for a reliable long-term VSA of large-scale coupled T-D systems.