Parametric steady-state voltage stability assessment of power systems using benchmark scenarios of geomagnetic disturbances

Geomagnetic disturbances (GMDs) caused by solar storms give rise to geomagnetically induced currents (GICs) in the power grid. GICs may affect transformers by hot-spot heating and damage, and increase reactive power losses in them. They may also cause harmonics, protection device misoperation, and loss of reactive power resources, potentially leading to a voltage collapse. This paper presents GMD analysis results of a large-scale power system, using the recent NERC GMD benchmark scenarios of non-uniform peak electric fields, to highlight the differences in results compared to the hitherto-conventional approach of using uniform electric fields for planning-type GMD studies. In addition, two types of parametric analyses to study the impact on steady state voltage stability are presented, 1) including transformer reactive losses from neighboring regions around a certain footprint to analyze the impact of study-system size 2) varying substation grounding resistances to understand the effects of their uncertainty.