Contingency selection is carried out so as to reduce the number of contingencies that need to be

analyzed by full AC load flow, while assessing the power systems security for quickly for identifying
those contingencies which may cause out-of-limit violations. Two popularly used methods for
contingencies selection are: ranking methods and screening methods.
Ranking methods involve ranking of contingencies in approximate order of severity. Contingencies are
ranked based on the value of scalar performance index (PI), which measures the system stress in some
manner. Several PI based methods have been suggested and tested for voltage security analysis. In
ranking method, the performance indices are explicitly expressed in terms of network variables and are
directly evaluated. It does not require computation of post-outage quantities, which in the screening
methods are evaluated by using some approximate solution approach.
Screening methods are approximate network solution to identify case causing limit violation. First the
network monitored quantities are calculated for all the contingency. Ranking is done based on the
results on the results of the approximate solutions. Some of the methods used to find approximate
solution with screening methods are the distribution factors, DC load flow, linearized load flow, one
iteration of AC load flow, local solution methods etc.
Most of the work on contingencies selection algorithm utilizes the second order performance indices
which, in general, suffers from masking and misranking effects. The lack of discrimination, In which the
performance index for a case with many small violations can be comparable in value to the index for a
case with one huge violation, is known as masking effect. By most of the operational standards, the
latter case in much more severe. Misrankings of contingencies are mainly due to the inaccuracies in the
model used for computing the performance indices or monitored quantities. Misranking is characterized
by errors in the computed order of relative severities of various contingencies. To some extent, the
misrankng effect can be avoided by using higher order performance indices. However, the eliminate the
misranking, the proper selection of weights for performance indices is required. Some of the efforts in
reducing these effects includes the work of happen et al. and Schafer et. al. to capture critical
contingences and optimal weights of the second order performance index, the method uses an
optimization technique, based on probabilistic approach, to compute threshold value of PI.
Methods of performance indices
Ejebe et. al. , for ranking of contingency according to their relative severities for both line and voltage
security analysis, suggested in 1979 the use of performance indices. Various modified versions of
ranking methods for voltage contingency selection have been suggested by lauby et. al. medicheria et.al.
and wasley et.al. The performance indices, in general form, can be written as
PI= wi/2n[fi(z)]2n
Where fi(z) is a liner function of zi, where zi denotes the changes in bus voltage magnitudes or generator
bus injections with respect to their rating etc. The order of the above performance index in 2n.
S.N.Singh and S.C.Srinivasan proposed voltage performance index (PIv) ,chosen to quantify deficiency to
out-of-limit-bus voltage, is defined as
PIv=

Where Vi and Visp are the post outage voltage mangnitude and specified (rated)voltage magnitude,
respectively, at bus-I ,n is the exponent of the function, and N is the total number of buses in the
system.Wvi is the weighting factor and

Any contingency case with voltage levels outside the limit yields a high value of PIv. On the other hand,
when all the voltage are within the limit, the voltage performance index PIv is small. Thus, this index
measures the severity of the out-of-limit bus voltage, and for a set of contingences, this index provides a
direct means of comparing the relative severity if the different outages.

The on-line steady-state analysis of the power system requires the evaluation of the effects of all
possible contingencies on the system. For a power system of average size. It is generally agreed that the
analysis of several hundred contingencies is usually adequate. Full ac analysis using a power flow for
several hundred cases presents a major computational burden and even with the use of fast efficient
power flow algorithms and techniques such as the matrix inversion lemma to simulate contingencies, it
requires substantial amounts of computer time. Since only a few of the contingencies are security risks
at any given time, an automatic contingency selection method that ranks the contingencies and selects
the most severe ones has been sought.
Contingencies ranking and selection methods much have two main properties to be useful. The
computational burden for the selection process and the subsequent AC analysis of the selected
contingencies must be less then that for the AC analysis of all the contingencies. This is measured by the
ratio of the execution times for the automatic contingency selection and that for the full AC analysis. The
other desired property is the accuracy of the ranking and hence the selection such that no contingencies
that present contingencies risk are overlooked. This is measured by the capture ratio which compares
the ranking obtained by the selection method to the actual ranking as obtained by full AC analysis.
The main reason for having contingency selection in analyzing on-line security iis to minimize the
computational requirement. However, this has to be balanced against the accuracy of the total security.

Security assessment is an important and integral part of EMS (Energy management system) installed in a
modern energy control center. In the security assessment function the contingency ranking is one of the
most important components. Because of the need to study thousands of cases in a short span of time
computationally it is also very demanding. The performance index(PI), based on normalized values of
voltage deviation or line overloads. The most accurate method available to estimate such performance
indices, and to rank them according to their severity, is the AC load flow. However, for several hundred
buses, full AC load flow requires prohibitively high CPU time. Hence, for such real time application linear,
noniterative approximate techniques have to be employed.
In all the approaches inverse matrix modification Lemma or compensation techniques are commonly
used. The DC power flow model or incremental real power model in FDFL is usually the starting point.
Because of speed of solution, the generation shift factors and line outage distribution factors are very
popular for overload contingency ranking, once these are calculated off-line and stored.
P.R.Bijwe et.al. proposed approach the post-outage line flow are obtained in term of generation
correction (around base case conditions) using GSDFs and line outage distribution factors. Using these
post-outage line flow, the ranking performance index for line overload is obtained in terms of
generation correction. The performance index is minimized subject to incremental power balance
equation and inequality constraints on generation correction. The efficiency of the proposed approach,
however, stems from the fact that linear analysis (normally used in contingency ranking) permits us to
optimize the generation corrections for every line outage contingency in the same base case pre-outage
condition itself. This allow us to use for all line outage contingency optimizations and same set of GSDFs
and loss formula coefficients. Although it must be remembered that, the generation corrections for
every contingency are found out in the pre-contingency condition. These are actually applied in
respective post-contingency conditions. To solve the optimization problem a procedure similar to that
involved in classical ED (dispatch) is used. In this work overload ranking of only line outages
contingencies has been considered. The procedure can, however, be easily extended to include
generator outage contingencies. Corrective capability due to generation rescheduling is considered .

Automatic contingencies selection is an important function in a modern energy management system

aimed at alleviating the computational burden involved in online security analysis. To be specific, the
purpose of a contingency selection package is to rank all possible outages in the system according to
their severities. Then, in on-line security analysis, only the top N outage cases in the ranking list should
be studied for more details using a full AC power flow (FACPF) method.
It has been pointed out that two separate ranking lists are required for real power problems and voltage
problems, respectively, since the contingencies causing line overloads do not necessarily cause bus
voltage violations and vice versa. Thus, two performance indices, which give measures for line MW
overloads and for bus voltage violations, respectively, are needed for real power and voltage
contingency selection. The performance indices in common use are of the following form

Pip=

PIv=

Where
Pi= MW flow in line i
Pimax= MW capacity limit of line i
Vj=voltage magnitude at bus j
Vjspec=specified nominal voltage at bus j (1)
Vjmax=maximum voltage magnitude at bus j (1.05 pu)
Vjmin=minimum voltage magnitude at bus j (0.95 pu)
p= set of lines used in the computation of PIp index
v= set of buses used in the computation of PIv index

Since