Contingency Ranking for Voltage Stability Analysis of
Large-Scale Power Systems
Majid Poshtan, Parviz Rastgoufard, Brij Singh
Abstract In this paper we propose a screening method and
suitable software program to analyze contingencies and their
impact on static voltage stability in large power systems. The
program substantially reduces the number of load flow
simulation for contingency analysis and voltage stability studies
and is based on the impact of the contingency on the load, and
the available Mega Watt Margin (MWM). The program
provides initially a ranking scheme for first and second level
contingencies by comparing their loadability with the maximum
loadability of the system. It then makes a short list of important
contingencies for detailed analysis. Contingencies that result in a
larger reduction of maximum loadability are placed in
Unacceptable Contingency Category, whereas, the contingencies
pertaining to smaller reduction are put in Acceptable
Contingency Category. The contingencies falling in between
acceptable and Unacceptable categories are termed as Significant
Contingencies and are placed in third category. The proposed
method is tested first by the IEEE 118-bus Test System, and then
is applied to study a large-scale real power system with 25,000
buses. The program considers the var limit of the synchronous
generators and switching scheme for the capacitor banks.
Index Terms Contingency ranking, voltage collapse, large-scale
power systems, and loading margin.
I. INTRODUCTION
Voltage collapse is preceded by uniformly decreasing
voltage at some major buses in a heavily loaded electric power
system. There are different methods to study the voltage
instability by using indices, like the smallest eigenvalue of the
Jacobian matrix of Newton-Raphson method for load flow
solution. The most fundamental measure of proximity to
voltage collapse is loading margin defined as the maximum
amount of additional load that can be added to the system
operating load point (base-case) before a voltage collapse
occurs. A simple and accurate way to find the MW loading
margin (MWM) is to perform a series of load-flow studies
while increasing the system load step by step in a specific
pattern up to the point that the load-flow does not converge to
a solution [1-8]. By plotting the voltage (V) at a bus verses
the total load (P), from the load flow solution for every load
step, the Power-Voltage (P-V) curve for each bus is obtained.
The nose of the P-V curve corresponds to the final step at the
maximum load that can be served by the system prior to the
reaching voltage collapse [9]. The MWM of the system is the
distance measured in MW from the initial operating point, to
the nose of the P-V curve with or without applying
contingencies to the system. Any failure in the power system,
such as loss of transmission lines, generators, or transformers,
will change the network configuration that in turn will shrink
the P-V curve [9,10] resulting in a smaller MWM for the
specific system failures. For an ideal condition when the
system experiences no failure and all of the components in the
system are working properly, the system is capable of
providing the Maximum of MWM, referred to MMWM in this
paper. In a real large-scale power system, we normally
encounter many possible contingencies and different
contingencies may have different impacts on the system
stability and also its loading margin MWM [11-13]. The main
reason for low voltage profile for some contingency and
therefore smaller MWM is the insufficient reactive power in
the vicinity of the low voltage buses [14-16]. There are some
severe contingencies with very low load margin that are only a
small fraction of the maximum margin, while for some other
contingencies the load margin is close to its maximum.
Because of the deregulation and the fact that many
systems have not expanded their transmission and generation
capacity in the recent years, many utilities are operating closer
to their maximum capacity. For a system with smaller margin,
more contingencies are considered as severe contingencies
and the system is exposed to more frequent voltage collapse.
Many power systems are now experiencing voltage problems
more frequently and voltage studies have gained increasing
attention from operating and planning points of views. It is
vital, then, for the electric utility planners and operators to
know the impact of every contingency single failure or
multiple failures on the voltage profile. Ranking all possible
contingencies based on their impact on the system voltage
profile will help the operators in choosing the most suitable
remedial actions before the system moves toward voltage
collapse [17,18]. To maintain the system reliability, it is
desirable to study the impact of the contingency on the load
margin, and to categorize them based on the ratio of their load
margin to its maximum. For contingencies with zero or
(rarely) negative margin an immediate operating action is
needed. Using the development of [19], we propose a method
and suitable software program for screening first and second
level contingencies based on the system loadability.
The necessary and preliminary parts of background
material on P-V curves and voltage stability are described in
Section II, and the proposed contingency ranking method and
its corresponding flowchart are provided in Section III. The
results of ranking contingencies for the IEEE 118-Bus system
and a large scale power system consisting of more than 25,000
components are included in Section IV. Concluding remarks
and future work are included in Section V. References
contributing to the part of the research documented in the
paper are included in Section VI.
II. VOLTAGE COLLAPSE AND CONTINGENCY
ANALYSIS
Any possible but unplanned single, double, or more
simultaneous failures in the system are considered as
contingency in this paper. The P-V curve determined for a
contingency is an indicative of how strongly the system
sustains the disturbance [16]. P-V curve studies are also
useful in directly demonstrating how much load shedding
should be carried out in the cases where the pre-fault network
load cannot be met even without any contingency in the
system [9,10]. In Figure 1, a ranking scheme is proposed for
screening contingencies, which is based on the MW Margin
reduction from MMWM corresponding to each contingency
[11]. Figure 1 shows the shift of the nose of P-V curves (Pmax)
to the left as MWM is reduced for more severe contingencies.
MWM forSignificant
1.2
MWM for Unacceptable Contingrncies
1 every load level after being increased by the incremental load
0.8
0.6
Voltage
0.4
0.2
0 to failure, and also to the level of contingencies under
0.8 1 1.2
Figure 1: P-V Curve with contingency ranking
The MWM corresponding to each contingency case is
compared with the Maximum MWM of the system without
any contingency (MMWM). To rank contingencies by their
impact on voltage collapse, we arbitrarily propose a boundary
of 90% to 100% of MMWM for Acceptable contingencies.
By ranking the contingencies, we are able to
substantially reduce the number of contingencies out of all
possible contingencies that need to be considered for voltage
stability analysis. Three categories are proposed for all
possible contingencies based on the MWM reduction from
MMWM. The three proposed categories are:
1. Acceptable - Contingencies with less than 10% MWM
reduction from MMWM.
2. Significant - Contingencies with 10% to 100% MWM
reduction from MMWM.
3. Unacceptable - Contingencies that result in negative
MWM.
The negative MWM means no post-contingency load-flow
solution exists for the simulated contingency. In the case of
Unacceptable contingencies, the load has to be shed
immediately to prevent any blackout in the system.
In Figure 1 the shaded area covers all the P-V curves
that correspond to Significant contingencies. The P-V curves
for the Acceptable contingencies have peak noses beyond the
shaded area and with their MWM closer to the MMWM.
Out of the three the types of contingencies -
Acceptable, Significant, and Unacceptable - the Significant
and the Unacceptable contingencies are more important
contingencies in our analysis and the proposed algorithm will
keep track of these contingencies.
The total number of load flow iterations needed to
find the MWM for different contingencies is a function of the
number of steps to reach the nose of the P-V curve, and also
the number contingencies. Each step is a load increment and
Contingencies is called Delta Load in Figure 2. Using Equation 1, the total
number of iteration is the number of performing load flow for
MWM for Acceptable Contingencies
and for every contingency.
20%
60% 95%
NI = NS NCi (1)
100%
NI = No. of load flow iterations
NS = No. of steps (load increments)
NCl = No. of lth level contingencies
The number of contingencies may vary for different
studies and it depends on the number of elements (N) exposed
1.4 1.6 investigation. If only the first level contingencies are under
Power (pu)
investigation, then the number of contingencies, NC1, is equal
to the number the elements exposed to failure in the system.
Representing the number of lth level contingencies by NCl for
l = 0, 1, 2,, N, then M in Equation 2 is the number of all
possible contingencies.
NC
N
M= l (2)
l =0
The zero level contingency, NC0 , means no element in the
system is subject to failure. To simplify writing of Equation
2, we define NC0,N to represent the sum of all contingencies
from zero level to N level, NC0 , NC1 , NC2 , , NCN as in
Equation 5.
M = NC0, N (3)
The number of lth level contingencies is defined as:
( N )!
NCl = (4) Base Case Data
( l )!*( N l )!

[ Delta Load ] = 1% [ Base Load ]

For a large-scale system, the total number of all possible
contingencies is extensive, so usually the first level or
sometimes the second level contingencies are considered. The Perform Load-Flow
total number of zero, first and second level contingencies,
NC0,2 is given in Equation 5.

2 [ Load ] =[ Load ]+
[ Delta Load ]
NC0,2 = NCl =1 + N + ( 1 )( N )( N 1) (5)
l =0
2
Yes
The proposed algorithm presented in this paper saves Does the Load-Flow
enormous computing time whenever many load flow converge?
simulations are needed in voltage collapse studies. The
No
number of iterations can be reduced significantly using the No
proposed algorithm outlined in flowchart shown in Figure 2. [ Load ] = [ Load ] - 2 [ Delta Load ]
Using the new algorithm in Figure 2, most of the computation
[ Delta Load ] = 1/2 [ Delta Load] Yes
time is spent on measuring the exact value of MWM for
Significant and Unacceptable contingencies, and less time is Does the
Load-Flow
spent on measuring the boundary of MWM for Acceptable Yes
converge?
contingency. The arbitrary boundary of 90% to 100% of
MMWM is found for Acceptable contingencies in one step Is Max [ Delta Bus ] >
and because most of the contingencies for large-scale systems 1 MW ?
do normally belong to the Acceptable category, the algorithm No Perform Load-Flow
is fast and practical in determining those contingencies that
need to be included in the study. The amount of time that is MWM i = SUM [ Load ] SUM [Load Base]
saved to find the boundary of 90% to 100% for Acceptable (Ci) is
MWM1 = MMWM Acceptable
contingencies depends on the reliability of the system for Contingency
more reliable systems there are more Acceptable
contingencies and therefore more computing time is saved to
categorized the contingencies. The 90% value is chosen as the SORT [ MWM ]
New Load = 90% MMWM
threshold in our study, although it may change from one study
to another.
The algorithm starts by finding the MMWM for the Is
base case (without any contingency) and the user sets an MWM Negative?

arbitrary Acceptable MWM threshold, for example 90% of the Next Contingency (Ci)
No
MWMM. If the simulated contingencys MWM is within the Yes
specified threshold, the contingency is ranked as Acceptable,
otherwise it is categorized as either Unacceptable or (Ci) is Unaccptable
Significant. For the Acceptable contingencies, there is no Contingency
need to find the exact MWM since it is greater than 90% of
the MMWM. All Acceptable contingencies can be treated as
(Ci) is Significant
a hypothetical base case without any contingency since their Contingency
MWM is more than 90% and not far from MMWM.
Following the filtering out of the Acceptable Figure 2: the Flowchart for ranking contingencies
contingencies, the remaining contingencies are tested against
the base case. If the simulated contingency has a solution for The new algorithm starts with the simulation of
the base case, the contingency is ranked as Significant, if not, voltage collapse at base load in system and without any
it is categorized as Unacceptable contingency. Using the fast contingency and finds the MMWM by performing several
ranking method of the proposed algorithm, within two load flow iterations. The MMWM is defined as:
iterative steps the Unacceptable contingencies are identified
and later measured for their MWM. MMWM = Pmax Pbase (6)
Then the range of 90% to 100% of MMWM is set for The voltage collapse occurs in Area 2 at a total load
Acceptable contingencies, 0% to 90% of MMWM for of 7443 MW ( Pmax ). The MMWM for the system is:
Significant contingencies, and finally the contingencies with
negative margin are called Unacceptable contingencies in this MMWM =7443 5677 = 1766 MW
paper. The next run of the algorithm calls the first case with
The MMWM of 1766 MW is available to serve 1766
contingency and the simulation starts not from the base load,
MW of load increase if all the generators, transmission lines,
but from the load point at the boundary of the Significant and
transformers, and all other components are in service and
Acceptable contingencies. This load point is at the threshold
operate properly.
of the Acceptable contingency with 90% of the MWMM
greater than the base load. In the first iteration of the B. Contingency Ranking of the Test System
simulation to obtain MWM, if the load flow solution
There are 177 transmission lines in the 118-bus test
converges, the contingency falls in the Acceptable category
system and, considering the outage of each single line at a
and the next simulation starts for the next contingency. This
time, there are 177 single contingency cases.
feature saves the time by placing the Acceptable contingency
out of the list for the remaining contingencies, and then the Table 1: MW Margin
next contingency is simulated. If the load flow solution
doesnt converge, the complete set of load flow solution is Contingency MW
Pmax

Case #
performed to find the exact value of MWM for that Line Outage MW Margin
(MW)
contingency. The first portion of the load flow finds the nose From Bus To Bus Margin (%)
point of the P-V curve for each contingency by increasing the
1 9 10 4730 -947 -54%
load stepwise upward to a point where no extra load can be
supplied by the system. If the load flow converges then the 2 8 9 4730 -947 -54%
system load (Load) is increased by a small load increment 3 26 30 6706 1029 58%
(Delta Load) of 1% of the base load (Base Load). Otherwise, 4 4 5 6901 1224 69%
the system load is increased by smaller increments of 0.5% of 5 100 103 7033 1356 77%
Delta Load. The steps toward the nose of the P-V curve get 6 25 27 7145 1468 83%
smaller as the solution gets closer to the nose. To avoid
7 23 25 7165 1488 84%
unnecessary running of the load flow program for very little
adjustment, the load increment will not get smaller than 1 8 69 75 7259 1582 90%
MW. When the load increment becomes less than or equal to 9 38 65 7268 1591 90%
1 MW, and the load flow program does not converge to a 10 22 23 7297 1620 92%
solution, the nose point of the P-V curve for that particular 11 17 113 7310 1633 92%
case is calculated. The load at the nose point of the P-V curve 12 3 5 7341 1664 94%
is considered to be in the middle of the maximum load point
13 11 13 7341 1664 94%
with a load flow solution and the next load point without a
load flow solution. The MWM of the case is the difference of 14 8 30 7344 1667 94%
the total load of all the buses and the base load. In the last 15 88 89 7346 1669 95%
step, the MWM for each contingency case is put in a sorted 16 17 18 7347 1670 95%
array to be categorized. 17 64 65 7351 1674 95%
IV. SIMULATION RESULTS 18 15 17 7348 1671 95%
19 30 38 7360 1683 95%
A. IEEE 118-bus Test System
20 21 22 7361 1684 95%
The simulation was initially run by conventional P-V 21 4 11 7363 1686 95%
curve calculation to find the load margin for all possible first
22 23 32 7364 1687 96%
level contingencies, and then was tested using the proposed
screening method. The program was successfully able to 23 5 6 7381 1704 96%
categorize the same contingencies in comparatively shorter 24 1 3 7384 1707 97%
time with no error. 25 2 12 7388 1711 97%
The complete description of IEEE 118-Bus Test
System can be found in reference [20]. In the base-case, the 178 No Contingency 7443 1766 100%
total system loading is 5677 MW, the swing bus Sporn (bus
Using the flowchart in Figure 2, all of the 177 single
# 69) generates 516 MW, which is the largest unit following
contingency cases are simulated. In Figure 2, the first run is
ClinchRv (bus # 89) with 607 MW at generation. The
the simulation of the system without any contingency. The
minimum voltage is at bus Darrah (bus # 76) with 0.943pu.
second run is the simulation of the system with the
transmission line from buses 1 (Riverside) to bus 2 (Pokagon)
out of service. The program repeats testing all other 176 cases
likewise. At the end of the simulation, the MW Margin for all Table 2: Ranking
of the 178 cases the base case and 177 single contingency
cases - are sorted in ascending order and saved in a vector, C o ntingency Lo ad

Case #
called [MWM] in the flowchart. After sorting the MWMs, the L ine O utage M argin R anking
base case with the maximum MWM of 1766 is saved at the Fro m B us T o B u s D ecrease
end of the list (C178 ). The first two cases in the list, C1 and 1 9 10 1 54%
U na ccepta ble
C2, have a negative MWM. Table 1 summarizes the result of 2 8 9 1 54%
the simulation. The table is truncated for the cases with more 3 26 30 42 %
than 1711 MW Margin. The first 25 cases in Table 1 4 4 5 31 %
correspond to the removal of one transmission line at a time as 5 1 00 103 23 %
described in the second and the third column of the table. The 6 25 27 17 % Significant
Maximum MW load served (before a loss of voltage due to 7 23 25 16 %
each contingency occurs) is shown in the fourth column. 8 69 75 10 %
Columns five and six indicate the MW and the percent MW
9 38 65 10 %
Margin respectively. According to Table 1, the removal of line
10 22 23 8%
9-10 or line 8-9 will have the most severe impact on loss of
11 17 113 8%
the system voltage. While the removal of line 2-12 (Case 25)
will hardly affect the voltage since 97% of the MMWM is still 12 3 5 6%
available even without line 2-12 being in service. 13 11 13 6%
The ranking of first level contingencies based on the 14 8 30 6%
impact of the contingency on the MW Margin and moving 15 88 89 5%
closer to the point of voltage collapse is shown in Table 2. 16 17 18 5%
Column 4 in Table 2 shows the load margin percentage 17 64 65 5%
decrease from the MWM of the system. The negative MW 18 15 17 5%
Margin for the Unacceptable first level contingencies is such A ccepta ble
19 30 38 5%
that, when line 9-10 or line 8-9 is out of service, the supply is 20 21 22 5%
less than the demand. In this case, the load flow solution does
21 4 11 5%
not converge and a loss of voltage at some buses in the system
is expected. Table 2 demonstrates that IEEE 118-Bus Test 22 23 32 4%
System has 168 first-level contingencies with less than 10% 23 5 6 4%
MW Margin reduction from the MW Margin of the case 24 1 3 3%
without any contingency. That means 95% 25 2 12 3%
[(168/178)*100=95%] of the total possible first level ...
contingencies have less than 10% impact on the systems 178 N o C o nting ency 0%
MWM, so they are called Acceptable in this paper. The rest
of possible contingencies (5%) has higher impact and falls in a
short list for more detailed studies. The simulation shows that
for IEEE 118-Bus Test System, 1% of the first level C. Large scale Test System
contingencies are Unacceptable, and 4% are Significant.
The system under investigation is a real size power
Figure 3 shows the percentage of Unacceptable, Significant,
system with more than 25,000 buses, and is divided into many
and acceptable contingencies using a pie chart.
areas based on the geographical parameters. This paper is
focused only on areas 1, 2 and 3 with 505 buses, and 589
transmission lines and generators in service.
1%

4% Table 3: General data for three service areas

Area # No. of Buses Pbase Q base

Unacceptable (MW) (MVAR)
Significant
Acceptable
1 120 1145 302

2 265 1251 440

95% 3 120 515 210

Total 505 2911 952

Figure 3: Pie Chart for three contingency categories Using Equation 5 for 589 elements in the system,
there are 173,755 possible first and second level
contingencies. The load flow program was applied to simulate As it was mentioned before the time needed to run the
the voltage collapse in the system and 173,755 contingencies program and also the size of the output report are so large that
at different load levels were considered. The results for the makes the analysis almost impractical.
contingencies with MWM less than MMWM are shown in
Table 4. Using the flow chart in Figure 2, the simulation took
only 4 hours and the output is very short and easy to analyze. Table 4 (continued): MWM for Large scale Power System
The total load for the three areas can be increased from 2911
MW to 4195 MW before occurrence of any voltage collapse

Contingency Level
Line Outage
assuming there is no failure in the system. The system will

Pmax (MW)

Base Load

MWM(j)
collapse when the load reaches to 4197 MW and at this point
the MMWM, from Equation 6, is 1286.

From Bus
j

To Bus
MMWM = 4197 2911 = 1286
Table 4: MWM for Large scale Power System

451 461
590 2 2805 2911 -106
Contingency Level

Line Outage 452 461

Pmax (MW)

Base Load
451 461
MWM(j)
591 2 2805 2911 -106
453 457
From Bus

j
To Bus

451 461
592 2 2805 2911 -106
453 522
451 461
593 2 2805 2911 -106
1 0 No Contingency 4200 2911 1289 453 530
1 1 451 461 3080 2911 169 451 461
594 2 2805 2911 -106
2 1 452 461 3080 2911 169 453 532
452 461
3 1 461 468 3080 2911 169 595 2 3080 2911 169
453 469
4 1 461 468 3080 2911 169
451 461
5 1 461 538 3080 2911 169 596 2 3080 2911 169
454 469
6 1 463 468 3100 2911 189 451 461
7 1 476 478 3100 2911 189 597 2 3080 2911 169
454 514
8 1 481 482 3100 2911 189 451 461
598 2 3080 2911 169
9 1 481 512 3100 2911 189 455 463
10 1 500 503 3100 2911 189 451 461
599 2 3080 2911 169
11 1 500 524 3100 2911 189 455 468
12 1 502 524 3100 2911 189 451 461
600 2 3080 2911 169
13 1 504 511 3100 2911 189 456 460
451 461
14 1 505 506 3100 2911 189 601 2 3080 2911 169
466 520
15 1 505 523 3100 2911 189
451 461
16 1 511 525 3100 2911 189 602 2 3080 2911 169
467 531
17 1 516 517 3100 2911 189 451 461
18 1 516 525 3100 2911 189 603 2 3080 2911 169
467 533
19 1 516 517 3100 2911 189 451 461
604 2 3080 2911 169
20 1 516 525 3100 2911 189 469 470
21 1 517 523 3120 2911 209 ... ... ... ... ... ... ...
22 1 530 536 3120 2911 209 836 716
45791 2 3750 2911 839
23 1 536 537 3120 2911 209 838 716
24 1 574 716 3120 2911 209

589 1 16584 16685 4190 2911 1279
The threshold for Acceptable margins is assumed to be 90%
of the MMWM. Table 5 shows the threshold for Acceptable
contingencies for the three areas.
 Table 5: Point of Collapse and Acceptable Threshold category holds more than 95% of the total possible
contingencies. Using the Acceptable, Significant, and
Area Pbase Pmax MMWM 90% of Acceptable Unacceptable categories helped us developing the algorithm
# that reduces the computation time by about 90%. The time
(MW) (MW) MMWM Threshold
saved by using the developed algorithm is very necessary for
(MW) large-scale power system analysis with thousands of elements.
The output of the simulation program is relatively shorter and
1 1145 1651 506 455 1600 the results are easier to analysis. The proposed ranking
scheme is valid for real power systems just by adjusting the
2 1251 1803 552 497 1748 Acceptable margins threshold.

3 515 743 228 204 719

Total 2911 4197 1286 1156 4067
The results of the simulation show there is no
Unacceptable single contingency, but there are 12
Unacceptable double contingencies in the system. Therefore
the system can not supply the demand load at the present load
level if any of these twelve double contingencies occurs. The
contingency table for the system is shown in Table 6.
Table 6: Contingency Table
Contingency No. of First Level No. of Second Level
Category Contingency Cases Contingency Cases
Unacceptable 0 12
Significant 74 189
Acceptable 515 173,755
V. Conclusions
The loading margin to the point of voltage collapse is
a fundamental index of relative voltage stability and system
security. This paper has demonstrated that computing the
MW margin sensitivities from the nose of the P-V curve can
do effective contingency analysis for voltage collapse studies.
It is shown that sensitivity of the MW margin to voltage
collapse studies with respect to first and second level
contingencies could be computed efficiently and quickly. The
paper introduces a ranking scheme to categorize the
contingencies into three categories based on their impact on
the MW margin. All possible outages up to the second level
contingencies were studied for a large size power system
consisting of 25,000 buses. It is observed that the MWM
decreases drastically for certain contingencies while it remain
more or less the same for others. Those contingencies with
negative MWM are categorized as Unacceptable
contingencies and those with less than 90% of the maximum
MWM are categorized as Significant contingencies. The
remaining contingencies are categorized as Acceptable
contingencies and it has been observed that the Acceptable
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Engineering at North Carolina State University. He joined the
Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
at Tulane University in 1987. He is presently Professor and
Chair of the Department and was endowed as Entergy Chair in
Electric Power Engineering in 1998. Parviz is a senior
member of IEEE, a member of the IEEE PES Power
Engineering Education Committee, a member of IEEE Control
Society, and an active participant of many technical
conferences held in the city of New Orleans. He has been the
principal investigator for more than 25 power systems
research projects. He is presently working with his graduate
students on online security assessment and control of
transmission systems, pattern analysis of induction motors for
efficient predictive maintenance, and application of reactive
power equipment such as FACTS devices for system var
management. (EECS Department, Tulane University, New
Orleans, LA-70118, USA, Phone: + 1504865-5785, Fax: +
1504862-3293, E-mail: pr@eecs.tulane.edu)
B.N.Singh (1968) received his BE degree from M.M.M.
Engineering college, Gorakhpur/lndia, ME degree from
University of Roorkee/lndia, and Ph.D. degree from Indian
Institute of Technology, New Delhi/lndia, in 1989, 1991 and
1996, respectively. In September 1996 he joined the
Department of Electrical Engineering, Ecole de technologie
superieure at Montreal/Canada as a Post Doctoral Fellow,
where he worked in the area of active filters, UPFC and
FACTS. In February 1999 he joined Department of Electrical
and Computer Engineering, Concordia University
Montreal/Canada as a Research Fellow, where he worked in
the area of power supplies for telecommunication system. In
January 2000 he joined the Department of Electrical
Engineering and Computer Science, Tulane University, New
Orleans/USA, as an Assistant Professor. His main research
interests are Power Supplies, Power Electronics, Power
Systems, Electrical Machines and Drives. He is a member of
IEEE. (EECS Department, Tulane University, New Orleans,
LA-70118, USA, Phone: + 1504862-3376, Fax: + 1504862-
3293, E-mail singh@eecs.tulane.edu.)

The Authors
Majid Poshtan (1963) received his BSE degree from Tehran
University, Tehran/Iran, MSE degree from University of New
Brunswick, NB/Canada, and Ph.D. degree from Tulane
University, LA/USA in 2000. He taught power systems at
Tulane University, LA/USA until 2003 when he joined
Petroleum Institute AD/UAE as assistant professor. He has
been working in the area of large-scale power systems,
probabilistic reliability analysis, and Electric machines since
1996. He is a member of IEEE. (Petroleum Institute, PO Box
2533, AD, UAE, mposhtan@pi.ac.ae).

Parviz Rastgoufard (1952) received his BSEE degree from

State University of New York in Buffalo in 1976, and his MS.
and Ph.D. degrees from Michigan State University in 1978
and 1983 respectively. From 1983 to 1987, he served as the
faculty of the Department of Electrical and Computer