Abstract
Given large-scale modern power systems with power electronic converters, the numerical simulation with subsynchronous oscillation (SSO) faces great challenges in engineering practice due to sharply enlarged modeling scale and high computational burden. To reduce the modeling scale, network partition and equivalent becomes a vital technique in numerical simulations. Although several methods have been developed for network equivalent, a generally accepted rule for network partition is still required. This paper proposes that the system can be partitioned into three parts, i.e., the internal, the middle, and the external subsystems, in which the internal subsystem consists of all power electronic components, the middle subsystem includes those selected AC dynamic components with detailed models, and the remaining components and buses constitute the external subsystem. The external subsystem is further represented by an equivalent RLC network determined by the frequency dependent network equivalent (FDNE) method. In the proposed method, the observability index and the electrical distance index are used to identify the interface between the middle and the external subsystems. Case studies based on a modified Hydro-Quebec system are used to verify the effectiveness of the proposed method.
NOWADAYS, the proliferation of power electronic converters in modern power systems brings about several new types of subsynchronous oscillation (SSO) problems associated with the interaction between converter controller and the AC power grid, which has aroused great concern among industry and academia. The studies of SSO require the detailed electromagnetic transient (EMT) models of related components in the system, and then the EMT simulation program [
1) Network partition and interface identification between subsystems, which means the location of interface buses between different subsystems needs to be identified.
2) Network equivalent representation that has similar electrical characteristics to the original one.
For the first problem, a type of two-part partition method has been widely used in the existing studies, in which the whole power system is partitioned into the internal and the external subsystems. The internal subsystem usually includes the power electronic converters associated with the studied SSO phenomenon with their detailed EMT dynamics modelled [
As for the second problem, the following two types of methods have been developed: ① the conventional Thevenin (or Norton) equivalent which is represented by an ideal voltage source in series with some equivalent impedance [
However, there are some problems in the above two-part partition method. On the one hand, though the system scale is reduced by replacing a large portion of the power system by a linear equivalent system, the nonlinear dynamics outside the internal subsystem cannot be presented completely [
In this paper, a three-part partition method is developed including the internal, the middle, and the external subsystems, and the interfaces among these subsystems are quantitatively identified. The conventional FDNE method is then applied to determine the equivalent RLC network representing the external subsystem. The contributions of this paper can be summarized as follows.
1) A three-part partition method is proposed for SSO analysis, in which the whole system can be partitioned into three subsystems to reduce the computational burden.
2) An observability index is introduced to identify the best observation bus related to each dominant SSO mode and an electrical distance (ED) index is used to quantify the electrical proximity degrees between any bus in the system and the “best observation buses”.
3) A frequency-domain equivalent model based on the FDNE method is introduced for network equivalent, in which the frequency response characteristic of the target network within the whole subsynchronous frequency band can be retained.
The remainder of this paper is organized as follows. In Section II, the network partition and interface identification are presented. Section III presents case studies and validates the method through a test system, and Section IV summarizes the paper.
The network partition framework is illustrated in

Fig. 1 Network partition framework.
1) The internal subsystem: this subsystem mainly consists of those power electronic converters modelled in details, including the corresponding points of common coupling (PCCs), in particular, those having high participation factors related to some SSO dynamics should be modeled with adequate degree of details [
2) The middle subsystem: this subsystem is topologically directly connected to the internal subsystem, which mainly preserves the EMT dynamics of those conventional power system components such as synchronous generator and asynchronous motor. For example, the stator and the rotor transient dynamics of synchronous motors and the detailed exciter dynamics should be modelled, while the dynamics of the prime mover is ignored or a constant mechanical power can be simply used due to its much slower dynamic behavior [
3) The external subsystem: the remaining components and buses constitute the external subsystem. Since this subsystem is not directly connected to the internal subsystem, the studied SSO phenomenon within the former has minor effect on the latter’s transient behavior, and vice versa [
Since the FDNE system can only present the characteristics of a linear and time-invariant system, the simplification of the following dynamic components in this subsystem should be accomplished.
1) Each passive dynamic component, e.g., asynchronous motor, is represented by a constant impedance model.
2) Each active dynamic component is represented by a fundamental frequency voltage source behind a reactance.
The above treatments make the external subsystem a linear and time-invariant system [
1) Interface 1: interface 1 is a kind of the internal subsystem bus which has a direct connection to the middle subsystem. In this paper, the group of all the grid-connected buses of these converters is regarded as interface 1.
2) Interface 2: interface 2 is a set of middle subsystem buses that have a direct connection to the external subsystem, which will be identified based on the following observability index [
Since interface 1 can be directly determined by the electrical topology according to Section II-A, in the following, an observability index and the ED index are introduced to determine interface 2.
According to the modal decomposition theory, any output trajectory of transient system after disturbance can be determined by SSO modes when the system nonlinearity is ignored [
Supposing that the time-domain trajectory of the
(1) |
where and N is the total number of buses; is the
(2) |
where k represents the corresponding best observation bus index in , and represents the bus index set of all best observation buses corresponding to the dominant SSO modes.
The observability index can quantify the participation degree of the
Considering the nodal admittance matrix , the following similarity transformation can be applied:
(3) |
where is the diagonal eigenvalue matrix; and and are the left and right eigenvector matrices, respectively. According to the definition, at frequency is a singular matrix, i.e., a zero eigenvalue exists in , which is actually a very small value close to zero due to computational error. Let represent the row index corresponding to the diagonal element with the smallest modular value in . According to [
(4) |
where represents the element of the row and column of the matrix L; and represents the element of the row and column of the matrix L. The larger the , the more obviously the
The bus with the largest is referred to as the best observation bus associated with the
ED is a widely used index to measure the electrical proximity and quantify the connection tightness between two buses in a power system [
(5) |
where , , , and are the impedance matrix elements between these two buses.
In this paper, a CED index is used to screen out those buses in the whole system with tight connection with the “best observation bus” of each dominant SSO modes. For each , let represent the
(6) |

Fig. 2 CED-based network partition.
It can be found that and the short circuit ratio (SCR) value at bus k also satisfy the following relationship:
(7) |
The complete network partition procedure is explained as follows.
Step 1: internal subsystem identification. All converter-interface-based devices integrated into the grid are classified into the internal subsystem devices, which are in the blue region shown in
Step 2: dominant SSO mode evaluation. The dominant SSO modes are evaluated by some mode analysis methods, e.g., the participation factor method.
Step 3: the best observation bus identification. For each dominant SSO mode, calculate the observability index for each bus based on (4) and the bus with the maximum value of observability index is regarded as the best observation bus, as illustrated in
Step 4: ED and CED calculation. According to (5), the ED between any bus and any bus in the remaining system (all buses excluding those in the internal subsystem and interface 1) is calculated, where represents the bus index set of remaining system. The corresponding is further calculated based on (6).
Step 5: middle and external subsystem identification. Given the internal subsystem determined in Step 1, for any dominant SSO mode, let k represents its corresponding best observation bus index in , all buses in set in the remaining systems are grouped according to the following rule: , if , then j is grouped into the middle subsystem set.
In this paper, all buses above are traversed and is the bus index set of the final middle subsystem. Thus, the bus index set of external subsystem can be determined by set difference operation . The relationship between the middle and the external subsystems is illustrated in
As described in Section II-A, the collection of the middle subsystem buses with the direct connection to the external subsystem is regarded as the desired interface 2.
Step 6: FDNE system. After the network partition, an N-port external subsystem should be replaced by an equivalent RLC network to reduce the system scale.

Fig. 3 Equivalent RLC network of external subsystem. (a) Typical N-port equivalent circuit. (b) Structure of FDNE.
In

Fig. 4 Modified Hydro-Quebec system.
According to the procedure in Section II, B30 becomes the single member in interface 1. B30 itself and the integrated type-4 wind farm system form the internal subsystem.
The SSO modes of the target system are calculated as , , and according to the method in [
The SSO mode observability index is computed from the nodal admittance matrix of the system. The results of the observability index are listed in
Signal | Two-part partition method | Three-part partition method |
---|---|---|
Converter’s DC voltage |
6.4000×1 |
1.8000×1 |
Voltage at B30 |
9.4032×1 |
1.1418×1 |
Current via line 30-1 |
1.1491×1 |
6.3222×1 |
Wind farm power at B30 |
1.2544×1 |
7.3337×1 |
Bus | Bus | ||
---|---|---|---|
30 | 0.0679 | 22 | 0.0139 |
23 | 0.0296 | 29 | 0.0132 |
1 | 0.0295 | 21 | 0.0121 |
24 | 0.0293 | 19 | 0.0111 |
15 | 0.0249 | 10 | 0.0110 |
25 | 0.0231 | 12 | 0.0090 |
3 | 0.0231 | 6 | 0.0083 |
26 | 0.0217 | 20 | 0.0078 |
2 | 0.0210 | 7 | 0.0075 |
16 | 0.0200 | 18 | 0.0061 |
14 | 0.0192 | 13 | 0.0058 |
27 | 0.0186 | 5 | 0.0054 |
4 | 0.0174 | 8 | 0.0047 |
9 | 0.0152 | 11 | 0.0047 |
28 | 0.0151 | 17 | 0.0039 |
Firstly, between interface 1 and each bus in the whole system except the internal subsystem is computed, and the results are listed in
Bus | (p.u.) | Bus | (p.u.) |
---|---|---|---|
30 | 0 | 22 | 0.0998 |
1 | 0.0500 | 19 | 0.0998 |
23 | 0.0551 | 17 | 0.0999 |
24 | 0.0620 | 10 | 0.1009 |
2 | 0.0688 | 18 | 0.1079 |
3 | 0.0706 | 7 | 0.1101 |
15 | 0.0759 | 12 | 0.1111 |
14 | 0.0819 | 13 | 0.1160 |
16 | 0.0851 | 8 | 0.1228 |
21 | 0.0871 | 4 | 0.1233 |
9 | 0.0877 | 11 | 0.4925 |
20 | 0.0903 | 26 | 3.3083 |
25 | 0.0923 | 27 | 9.3089 |
5 | 0.0936 | 28 | 12.7495 |
6 | 0.0951 | 29 | 13.5721 |
An FDNE for the external subsystem is constructed, and the result is validated both in frequency-domain analysis and time-domain simulation.
In this paper, the following admittance aggregation error is used to measure the equivalence effect before and after the approximation.
(8) |
where is the driving point admittance matrix [

Fig. 5 Relationship between FDNE order and .

Fig. 6 FDNE results of frequency response. (a) Magnitude-frequency characteristics. (b) Phase-frequency characteristics.
The disturbance is set as follows. At s, the output power of the wind farm at B30 is increased from 1.0 p.u. to 1.1 p.u. and at s, the power recovers to its original value. After time-domain simulation, the DC voltage of the converter is presented in

Fig. 7 Result of simulation comparison. (a) DC voltage of converter Vdc. (b) Instantaneous current waveforms injected into B2.
The equivalence performance can be further quantified using the 2-norm of the error signal , defined as [
(9) |
where and are any voltage/current signal (for DC signals) or its effective value (for AC signals) before and after the equivalence, respectively. Obviously, smaller value means better equivalence performance.
Here, a comparison study between the proposed method and another two-part partition method in [
The simulation is based on a PC platform with 2.80 GHz 8 GB RAM configuration using MATLAB/Simulink. For a 1-s length simulation with time step of 2 , the computation time for the original system and the equivalent system with the proposed method is 191.64 s and 22.44 s, respectively, which validates that the proposed method can effectively improve the simulation efficiency.
This paper proposes a three-part partition method and a quantified method for interface identification in EMT simulation. The whole power grid is partitioned into the internal, the middle, and the external subsystems, where interface 1 is identified as the group of the all the grid-connected buses of these converters, whereas interface 2 is identified by the observability index and an ED-based method. For the purpose of improving the simulation accuracy, the dynamic components in middle subsystem are modeled in detail. The external subsystem is replaced by FDNE to reduce the system size and improve the simulation efficiency. Finally, the simulation results verify that the equivalent system obtained from the proposed method performs better in terms of simulation accuracy than the conventional two-part partition method. The time-domain trajectory before and after the network equivalence is well consistent and the computational burden can be effectively reduced as well, such that an acceptable simulation efficiency compared with the original full system is realized.
Appendix
In principle, the FDNE method approximates the frequency characteristics of the original external subsystem, driving point admittances as rational polynomials [
1) Obtain frequency responses of , as introduced in (8), over a specific bandwidth.
2) Approximate by , whose components are -order partial fraction expansions:
(A1) |
Each polynomial consists of a set of partial fractions , a constant term , and a linear term . Coefficients, i.e., , , , and , are obtained by solving a set of over-determined equations [
3) Carry out passivity enforcement of to ensure the convergence of the simulation [
4) Shape the equivalent network in Fig. 3 according to the fitting matrix . The passive admittance network elements and can be determined as:
(A2) |
(A3) |
Other parameters such as , , , and in Fig. 3(b) can be determined by coefficients of in [
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