A study of automatic contingency selection algorithms for steady-state security assessment of power systems and the application of parallel processing

The performance of various Contingency Selection methods has been investigated within the framework of accuracy for application to steady-state power system security assessment and suitability for execution in a real-time environment. In the study the following requirements have been considered: (a) Effectiveness: in identifying contingencies which may cause limit violations and discarding all others; (b) Adaptability: to model both permanent and temporary changes in the system; (c) Flexibility: to model any number and type of contingencies; (d) Computational efficiency: in terms of speed in selecting the sub-set of contingencies as well as in terms of storage requirements; (e) Ability: to update and augment on-line the list of contingencies given the actual system operating data. [Continues.]