Damping estimation in highly interconnected power systems

In a large interconnected power system, oscillating modes typically arise after disturbances. Estimation of the rate of rise or decay of these disturbances (i.e. of the damping factor) is important so that poorly damped modes which put the system at risk can be identified. In the past both Fourier based and parametric techniques have been used to estimate the damping factors of the oscillating modes. Parametric methods tend to perform poorly in noise and existing sliding window methods do not optimally account for the kind of noise present in real operating environments. This paper presents an improvement to existing Fourier based methods for damping factor estimation. Simulations and real data results are provided to support the claims made in the paper. A comparison with parametric methods is also made.