The Impact on Voltage Stability of the Integration of
Renewable Energy Sources into the Electricity Grids
Radu Toma
Faculty of Electrical Engineering
“Gheorghe Asachi” Technical University
Iasi, Romania
Abstract—The paper presents the impact on voltage stability of
the integration of renewable energy sources into the electricity
grids. The P-V curves are built by using the Power System
Analysis Toolbox (PSAT) and the continuation power flow (CPF)
method. Different levels of wind penetration were considered in
the three study cases presented in the paper.
Keywords- Voltage Stability, Continuation Power Flow, Wind
power generation, Synchronous Generators, PSAT
I. INTRODUCTION
One of the most common renewable energy sources is wind
energy. This way of producing electricity is preferred because
of its advantages, like the resource, that is free and renewable,
but besides the positive advantages, it has also negative effects
on the voltage stability of electrical grids, especially in the case
of high levels of penetration.
Some of the problems that have to be considered in the
context of wind energy integration into the electricity grids are:
the precariousness of the wind energy, the behavior of wind
farms in case of a fault in the electricity grids and their
influence on the voltage stability.
Voltage stability depends on the electrical grid capacity to
maintain a balance between energy demand and energy
supplied to the consumers. Voltage stability problems appear
mainly when energy demand is higher than the capacity of the
network. Voltage instability is manifested by a slight voltage
decrease or increase in different buses, until the critical point is
almost reached, when the voltage drops fast.
The P-V curves are a very important tool in determining the
voltage stability because with their help we can find out the
stability limit. They can be obtained by using the CPF method.
In recent years in the context of liberalization of energy
markets and in the context of UE projects involving the
production of electricity from renewable sources into the
electricity networks, we are dealing with a higher percentage of
energy from renewable sources. At the same time power
consumption has increased due to economic development,
thereby the electricity grids operate closer to the critical point.
Both wind power integration and the increase of power
consumption make the voltage stability a very important aspect
in the electricity grids operation and planning, in order to
ensure the continuity of supply.
Mihai Gavrilas
Faculty of Electrical Engineering
“Gheorghe Asachi” Technical University
Iasi, Romania
In this sense different studies noticed specific issues. Thus,
in [1] the aims are to maximize the wind penetration in the
IEEE 14-bus test system and to find out the penetration limit
and the maximum bus loading levels. The wind penetration is
maximized by placing the wind farms at the locations where
they give the best results. This became a very important
problem because of both environmental and economic
advantages of the wind energy. In [2] the CPF is used to obtain
the P-V curves for the IEEE 14-bus test system with and
without generator reactive limit constraints, to study the
behavior in different contingency cases and to identify the
weakest bus from the system. In [3] P-V curves are obtained
for a test network with 2 areas by using the CPF method
implemented in the Matlab toolbox PSAT [6,7,8]. Using the P-
V curves, the best method to increasing voltage stability limits
is analyzed. Paper [4] presents the influence on voltage
stability of the variation of line reactance, of the compensator
and of the placement of generators, by building the P-V curves
with the CPF method. Paper [5] presents a comparative
stability analysis between conventional synchronous generators
and wind farm to show the negative and positive aspects of the
wind generators.
This paper presents a study on the impact of the integration
of renewable energy sources on the voltage stability, by using
the CPF method to build the P-V curves in different cases. A
description of the continuation power flow method, used to
analyze the voltage stability is briefly presented in section II.
The description of studied cases, the simulation results and the
P-V curves are covered in the section III. Section IV presents
the conclusions resulted from P-V curves for the studied cases.
II. DESCRIPTION OF CONTINUATION POWER FLOW
METHOD
The purpose of the CPF method is to find a set of solutions
from a base-case up to the critical point for a given system load
increase scenario. The continuation power flow method uses a
predictor-corrector scheme to build the P-V solution curve as
shown in Figure 1. The chosen corrector method in this paper
is the correction step in the perpendicular intersection.
The predictor step is chosen by using a linear
approximation in a direction tangent at the P-V curve.
Therefore the prediction stage can be described by the
following equation:
 p 1 III. CASE STUDIES
     d 
p

V   V     dV  (1) The case studies used the IEEE 14-bus test system modified
  by adding a synchronous generator at bus 4 with the same
       d  characteristics like the one at bus 2. The active power
generated by synchronous generator at bus 2 (P2= 0.4 p.u.) was
where the subscript „p+1” means the next solution, and  is the equal split with the new generator at bus 4, namely P2= 0.2 p.u.
loading parameter. The step size should be in the radius of and P4= 0.2 p.u. A base case and three other cases were
convergence of the corrector. If not, a smaller step is chosen. considered, as described below.
In the case of the CPF method with perpendicular In all three cases, we considered that the synchronous
intersection, as the solution come closer to the critical point the generator from bus 4 was replaced by a wind farm with the
step size  is decreased to ensure the non-singularity of the same base power as the synchronous generator. The capacity of
Jacobian matrix. the synchronous generator at bus 2 and the wind farm at bus 4,
As to the predictor step, the value of increments Vp and varies from a low level of wind penetration (case 1) to higher
p can be determined by the following equations: levels of wind penetration (case.3). The base case uses two
identical synchronous generators placed at bus 2 and bus 4 with
k k  p active powers P2= 0.2 p.u. and P4= 0.2 p.u.
 p  and V p  (2)
p p
A. Subcases
where, k =  1 – the step size control parameter. The tangent Case 1 - In this case the active power generated by the
synchronous generator at bus 2 is P2= 0.3 p.u., and the value of
vector, p, can be computed as:
the active power generated by the wind farm at bus 4 is P4= 0.1
V p p.u.
p  (3)
 p Case 2 - In the second case the synchronous generator at bus 2
and the wind farm at bus 4 have the same power generation,
The corrector step equations are: P2=P4=0.2 p.u.
Case 3 - In the final case the generated active power by the
g (V ,  )  0 synchronous generator at bus 2 is decreased at the value P2=0.1
Vc  (V p  V p ) 
 
p.u., and the active power generated by the wind farm is
(4)
p(V ,  )  V p  p   0 increased at P4= 0.3 p.u.
c  ( p   p )
B. CPF for subcases
For the simulation of different loading points a loading
The static voltage stability studies used the Matlab software
parameter is considered, which in the base case is  and at
with the PSAT toolbox [7, 8] to carry out the CPF for the three
the maximum loading level is crit. The power variation
cases. The numerical values were extracted for all the buses in
according to loading parameter is described by the following
order to build the P-V curves.
equations:
Thus Table I shows the numerical values of the maximum
PLi ( )  PLi 0  [1    K Li ] (5) loading parameter crit and the related voltages for all the
QLi ( )  QLi 0  [1    K Li ] (6) network buses in the three cases.
where: PLi0, QLi0–active and reactive power at the base load at From Table I it can be observed that with the increase of
bus i; KLi–multiplier to designate the rate of load change at bus the wind generation penetration, the value of the maximum
i as loading conditions change. In this paper KLi was loading parameter is decreasing, thereby the voltage instability
considered the same for all the buses, namely KLi = 1. is reached faster. Also the numerical values from Table I show
that with the increase of the wind penetration the voltages from
all the buses have higher values.
Figures 2 to 5 present the P-V curves for four buses of the
test system, namely buses 2, 4, 10 and 14 in each of the three
special cases as described above. The active powers were
computed based on the loading parameter and a base power
(Sb=100 MVA).
From those figures it can be obseved that the test system
has a better voltage stability in case 1, which demonstrates that
with the increase of the wind penetration, the systemwill lose
his stability at lower values of the loading parameter, even that
the voltages in all the system buses are higher than in the base
Figure 1. CPF: predictor-corrector step by means of tangent vector. case.
 TABLE I. NUMERICAL VALUES FOR PARAMETER crit AND VOLTAGES (P.U.) FOR THE THREE STUDY CASES AND THE BASE CASE.

λcrit Bus 2 Bus 3 Bus 4 Bus 5 Bus 6 Bus 7 Bus 8 Bus 9 Bus 10 Bus 11 Bus 12 Bus 13 Bus 14
Case 1 1.4111 1.0062 0.9505 0.8850 0.9124 0.9797 0.9304 1.0284 0.8898 0.8885 0.9256 0.9415 0.9263 0.8623
Case 2 1.3480 1.0115 0.9583 0.8967 0.9233 0.9924 0.9437 1.0363 0.9064 0.9055 0.9410 0.9565 0.9422 0.8815
Case 3 1.2981 1.0118 0.9599 0.8936 0.9226 0.9949 0.9447 1.0368 0.9093 0.9090 0.9443 0.9604 0.9464 0.8868
Base case 1.9541 0.9336 0.8624 0.8404 0.8261 0.8182 0.8183 0.9600 0.7293 0.7152 0.7525 0.7547 0.7312 0.6476

V10 BUS 10
V2 BUS 2
1.1
1.1
1.05
1.05
1
1
0.95
0.95
Case 1 0.9 Case 1
0.9
Case 2 Case 2
0.85 0.85
Case 3 Case 3
0.8 0.8 Base case
Base case
0.75 0.75

0.7 0.7

0.65 0.65 P
P 50 60 70 80 90 100 110 120 130 140 150 160 170 180 190 200
50 60 70 80 90 100 110 120 130 140 150 160 170 180 190 200

Figure 2. The P-V curves for bus 2 Figure 4. The P-V curves for bus 10

V4 BUS 4 BUS 14
V14
1.1
1.1
1.05
1.05
1
1
0.95 0.95
Case 1 Case 1
0.9 0.9
Case 2 Case 2
0.85 Case 3 0.85 Case 3
0.8 Base case 0.8 Base case

0.75 0.75

0.7 0.7

0.65
0.65 P P
50 60 70 80 90 100 110 120 130 140 150 160 170 180 190 200 50 60 70 80 90 100 110 120 130 140 150 160 170 180 190 200

Figure 3. The P-V curves for bus 4 Figure 5. The P-V curves for bus 14

C. Contingency analysis TABLE II. NUMERICAL VALUES FOR PARAMETER crit AND
VOLTAGES (P.U.) FOR THE CONTINGENCY ANALYSIS
For the three studied cases the voltage stability analysis
was carried out in the event of a contingency. For that it is λcrit Bus 2 Bus 4 Bus 10 Bus 14
considered only the n-1 contingency type, for every line from Case 1 1.3926 1.0122 0.8521 0.8638 0.8387
the IEEE 14-bus test system. The obtained results are basically Case 2 1.3325 1.0167 0.8642 0.7638 0.7091
the same for all 17 cases. Case 3 1.2841 1.0206 0.8775 0.8981 0.8768
Base case 1.8429 0.9580 0.8529 0.7638 0.7091
Figures 6, 7, 8 and 9 present the P-V curves in the case of
In all three cases, the changes in the stability limit
one contingency (tripping line 2-4), for the same buses
determined by the presence of the wind farms, assessed as the
considered in section III B. In those figures, for comparison,
difference between the critical values of parameter crit
the P-V curves were build with and without consideration of
multiplied by the base power (Sb=100 MVA), have similar
the contingency.
values, namely a decrease of about 1.6 MW, as reflected in the
As it emerges from the analysis of the P-V curves from numerical values from Tables I and II. At the same time, in the
figures 6, 7, 8 and 9, in all cases the contingency occurrence is base case, when there is no wind penetration, the changes in the
accompanied by a stability limit decrease. stability limit are more substantial, namely of about 11 MW.
 Figure 6. The P-V curves for bus 2 with and without contingency
Figure 7. The P-V curves for bus 4 with and without contingency
IV. CONCLUSIONS
This paper describes the impact on voltage stability of the
integration of renewable energy sources into the electricity
grids using a known IEEE 14-bus test system. The obtained
results demonstrate the efects of the integration of renewable
energy sources in the power grids. The stability of the test
system is decreasing firstly with the integration of the wind
farm in the grid and secondly with the increasing of the
generated active power. In the case of a contigency, the
stability limit decreases in a greater extant when the wind
enregy is not present. Future works envisage an analysis on the
problem of increasing the voltage stability in the power grids,
in the context of the integration of renewable energy sources.
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Figure 8. The P-V curves for bus 10 with and without contingency
Figure 9. The P-V curves for bus 14 with and without contingency
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