A Generalized Approach to Contingency Screening with System Islanding

Abstract

This paper introduces a generalized contingency analysis approach that can identify critical pairs of contingencies (N-2 contingencies) that result in severe reliability violations or large numbers of islanded system components, bridging the gap between academic research and practical applications. We formulate the practical problem of N-2 contingency analysis in a clear mathematical format. We propose a generalized contingency screening approach compatible with all types of contingencies, including generator failure, load failure, open branches, and their mixtures that can lead to islanding. The proposed approach is demonstrated in a real Texas system, showing its effectiveness in critical contingency identification and its ability to enable possible practical contingency analysis applications.