Impedance-Based Stability Analysis: Nodal Admittance or Bus Admittance?

Impedance-based stability analysis is widely adopted for small-signal stability demonstration of power electronics dominated power systems. Stability assessment can be performed using either nodal admittance or bus admittance (i.e. equivalent admittance of a network viewed from a specific bus). This paper demonstrates that stability analysis using the bus admittance may not always produce correct results, even though it is easier to implement. Unstable multi-bus systems can be wrongly identified as stable by the single-bus analysis, in the cases where other buses play a dominant role in causing instabilities. A detailed comparison between nodal and bus admittance stability analysis is presented, leading to recommendations for their practical use. A phase-based method is proposed to facilitate the acquisition of eigenloci encirclement around the critical point, which can be used in the stability analysis based on either nodal or bus admittance. Following the conclusion of our work, we recommend multi-bus analysis in white-box model applications for instability mode analysis and stability-oriented design. Single-bus analysis is preferable in black-box model applications due to its simplicity. It is also suggested to select a bus for analysis from those connected to a high share of inverter-based resources, to ensure the correctness of results.