Genetic algorithms in power system small signal stability analysis

Power system small signal stability analysis aims to explore different small signal stability conditions and controls, namely, (1) exploring the power system security domains and boundaries in the space of power system parameters of interest, including load flow feasibility, saddle node and Hopf bifurcation ones, (2) finding the maximum and minimum damping conditions, and (3) determining control actions to provide and increase small signal stability. These problems are presented in the paper as different modifications of a general optimization problem, and each of them has multiple minima and maxima. The usual optimization procedures converge to a minimum/maximum depending on the initial guesses of variables and numerical methods used. In the considered problems, all the extreme points are of interest. Additionally, there are difficulties with finding the derivatives of the objective functions with respect to parameters. Numerical computations of derivatives in traditional optimization procedures are time consuming. In the paper, we propose a new black box genetic technique for comprehensive small signal stability analysis, which can effectively cope with highly nonlinear objective functions with multiple minima and maxima and derivatives which can not be expressed analytically.