Quantifying the risk of a blackout using PSA/Eurostag platform software

This paper is treating the problem of quantifying the risk of a blackout in a power system when realizing off-line simulations for dedicated power system analysis. The issue consists in the computation of the stability limit for a power system, the concept of steady-state stability reserve being reviewed. Even in off-line simulation the stability reserve of a power system is not a straight forward analysis. The difficulties appear when trying to solve the stability reserve aspect for a large power system. For this kind of electrical network the common well known analysis techniques are not available mainly due to computational burdens. Present paper is proposing an original methodology to find out the stability reserve of a power system. The main theme of this paper is particularly relevant in the light of the blackouts that affected utilities all around the world recently. For preventing blackouts first step consists in analyzing and studying the reasons and the mechanism of the registered blackouts. The second step is to understand how to prevent the blackouts. Present paper is focusing of the second step in preventing blackouts by finding out a methodology to assess the stability reserve for a power system or a specific area from a power system beyond that a blackout might appear.