2012 3rd IEEE PES Innovative Smart Grid Technologies Europe (ISGT Europe), Berlin

Short Circuit Current Estimation using PMU

Measurements during Normal Load Variation

S. C. Verma, Member, IEEE, Yoshiki Nakachi, Yoshihiko Wazawa, Yoko Kosaka,
Takenori Kobayashi, Member, IEEE, Kazuya Ornata, and Yoshiki Takabayashi

Abstract--

estimation

This

method

paper
using

purposes
phasor

short

circuit

measurement

unit

current
(PMU)

measurements (synhcrophasors, hereafter called as phasors) of

voltages and currents obtained during normal load variation. The
method follows the basic concept of representing the source side
of power system by an equivalent circuit with a voltage behind
back impedance and employs a set of voltage and current phasors
measured at substations over a certain period.

In order to

improve an accuracy of the proposed estimation method, the

concept of using a difference between the two consecutive phasors
is introduced. Furthermore, to make the method applicable to a
real

world

system,

the

estimation

process

is

augmented by

implementing a reference phasor concept to remove the effects of

system wide frequency variations and a filtering process to filter
out the outlier phasors. Finally, the validity and effectiveness of
the purposed methods were checked and confirmed using field
tests.

Index Terms--Field testing, least square method, normal load

variation, outlier filter, phasor measurement unit (PMU), short

circuit current, short circuit impedance, reference phasor, two

consecutive phasors difference based approach.

I.

INTRODUCTION

he Japanese government has set a target to integrate

53GW of renewable energy sources especially solar
generation by 2030. To realize this target, there is a need to
make the existing grid smarter by utilizing a number of
advanced technologies. One of those new technologies is a
measurement device known as a phasor measurement unit
(PMU). The PMU based applications are being vigorously
explored for many areas like monitoring, protection and
control of power system operation [1]-[2]. In the context of
PMU based monitoring applications, this paper considers
PMU measurements (phasors) to monitor/estimate short circuit
current.
The short circuit current is invariably used in many aspects
of power system planning and operation. It is usually
calculated using power system parameters and its
configuration. However, the continually changing power
operation conditions and more integration of renewable
sources like wind and solar generation to the system in the
future, it is going to be more difficult to grasp fully the system

configuration and parameters needed in performing such

calculation accurately. As a result, there is a rising need to
estimate the short circuit current from on-line measurements
and without any pre-knowledge of network parameters and
configuration.
In this regard, several studies have been carried out and some
estimation methods have been suggested [3]-[9]. They can be
classified into two categories: active and passive. The active
methods try to inject some intentional disturbance to the
system and use the voltage and current response for estimation
[3]-[6]. As such, this class of methods is not suitable for real
time estimation. The passive methods use the current and
voltage measurements obtained during normal load variations
or disturbance to estimate the short circuit current [7]-[9].
However, these methods lack in accuracy as they have not
properly addressed the main implementation issues. The main
issues are like how to filter bad data, how to fix the effects of a
system wide frequency variations and how to prepare a large
set of coherent data needed in real-time estimation.
In order to redress all the above issues, this paper purposes a
short circuit current estimation method using PMU
measurements of voltages and currents obtained during normal
load variation at two adjoining substations. The overall
method follows the basic concept of representing the source
side of power systems by an equivalent circuit with a voltage
behind back impendence. The method employs a set of voltage
and current phasors measured at substations over a certain
period. In order to improve the estimation accuracy of the
proposed method, the concept of using a difference between
the two consecutive phasors for a set of phasors is introduced.
Furthermore, to make the method applicable to a real world
system, the estimation process is augmented by implementing
a reference phasor concept to remove the effects of system
wide frequency variations and a filtering process to filter out
the outlier phasors. Finally, the validity and effectiveness of
the proposed methods were checked and confirmed using field
tests.
The next sections describe the proposed estimation method
followed by its validation through field testing on an actual
system.
II.

S. C. Venna, Y. Nakachi, and Y. Wazawa, are with Chubu Electric Power

Cpo Inc, Nagoya 459-8522, Japan (e-mail: Sc.Verma@chuden.co.jp).
Y. Kosaka, T. Kobayashi, K. Ornata, and Y. Takabayashi are with
Toshiba
Corp.,
Fuchu,
TokyoI83-8511,
Japan(e-mail:
yoko. kosaka@toshiba. cojp).

SHORT CIRCUIT ESTIMATION METHOD

A. Main Algorithm
The main steps of the proposed short circuit estimation
method are described as follows;

978-1-4673-2597-4/12/$31.00 2012 IEEE

Q) Measure voltage and current phasors during natural load

variation using PMU.

(2) Remove the system wide frequency variation (if any)

from a set of coherent phasors using a system phasor.

Prepare a set of coherent phasors using a reference
phasor while filtering out the outliers.
@ Estimate short circuit impedance employing a least square
approach on the set of coherent phasors of step
@ Estimate short circuit current using the estimated short
circuit impedance and measured phasors.
The proposed estimation method is applied to a power system
shown in Fig. 1. This is a typical case of a medium voltage
level (77kV) system having a mid branch with no facility to
measure voltage and current phasors at its mid branching point.

Equivalent System

Point2
Pointl
v,

Load I

current

ZLI

Load2

Zu

Fig. 3. Equivalent power system with a single line.

First of all, mid branching point voltage V3 and current

calculated as shown in the following equations;

13

are
(1)
(2)

i.dj3la.!'fhjng Point

Equivalent System
ZSYS '

On knowing V3 and 1;, load impedances (ZL/, ZLJ) and delta

star equivalent impedances (Za Zb, Zc) are calculated using the
following equations.

IV3, 13

I
____ I

VG
..

MeaslLling Pointl
(Voltage.Current)

'.u.l' !/--r-:\--;;:

(3)

V,

(4)

Circuit
current

(5)
In order to implement the concept of a reference phasor, two
points (substations) are considered for the PMU measurements.
VI and 11 are measured voltage and current at measuring point1,
whereas V2 and 12 are measured voltage and current at
measuring point2. The source side equivalent system is
assumed to voltage VG with back impedance as Zsys' The line
impedances ZOnel, ZOne2 and ZOne3 are shown in Fig.I. Keeping
the implementation of the proposed method simple, the mid
branch is replaced by an equivalent line between
! - . - . - . - . - . - . - . - . - . - . - . - . - . - . - . - . - . - . - . - . - . -y3- i3- . - . i
,
I v, I

V"I,

c:::::)

{2,

r----r .....................v' " .1.................... ., ..1"" ........ .

(6)
(7)

The equivalent power system of Fig. 1 without a mid branch is

shown in Fig. 3. Using Z'line, the relationship between voltages,
current and system back impedance can be now shown as
under;

rj'1 r
o

Z. ,-1sys
.
,-1
sys Zsys + + Zline
0
;)I
,-I

-Z,-I

. I-I

ZLI

.
ZL2 (Z;ysZ;"1 + Zne (Z;YS + ZI ))
Zsc Z;ysZL2 + ZIZL2 + Z;ysZ1 + Z:ine (Z;YS + ZI )

(8)

The short circuit impedance as seen from measuring point2

can be calculated using the next equation.
v"I,

Zu

measuring points by applying star-delta transformation as is

given in Fig.2.

(9)

On substituting Zsc and V2(V 2 complex conjugate) in (10) and

(11), the short circuit current Isc and short circuit capacity Psc
at point2 can be computed.

jsc
pse

(10)

V,v2'

(11)

Zsc

zsc'"

With known value of ZOnel, ZOne2 and ZOne3, and

measured/calculated values of voltage and current at pointl

(V'I' Ia and point2 (Vb 12) of Fig. l., the evaluation of back
impedance of equivalent system Z'sys is the main parameter
need to be calculated in order to find out the short circuit
current of (10). The estimation of Z'sys is described in the next
section.
B.

Estimation of Impedance using Least Square Method (LS)

With the power system shown in Fig. 3., the application of

a least square method is described for a set of phasors
measured or calculated from PMU measurements during
natural load variation. From (8), the relation between system
back impedance and pointl data (V'I' 11) are shown as follows;
'=IiG-z),
(12)
where

'=u+ jw, j =g+ jh, VG =V , + jV ;, Z;YS = RSYS + jXSYS

g
g
l
Equation (12) can be rearranged and shown as (13)

[:H: : =! l
h

11

(13)

The parameters and variables in (13) can be shown in the form

of y=xe, and by using a least square method, it can be
represented as shown below;

X Txe=xTy

wherey= u

[]
w

'X
=

(14)

0 -g h , and
0 I -h -g
I

e-

Proposed Modifications for the Estimation Method

It is assumed that the system voltage and its back

impedance remain unchanged for a period during which a set
of phasors is measured. In this study, this period is selected as
3 seconds, so it is quite reasonable to assume the constant
values of these parameters over this short period. With this
assumption and on using the measured/calculated values of
pointl ( V 'lk IJk(k=1,2,
',n)), (12) can be used to derive a
modified variant of the estimation method as follows;

=_ I'l
I'l/'k

..

= VG Z'sYSjlk
_I = VG Z'sYSjlk_1

(16)

(17)
M, =I'lg+ jM

Equation (17) can further be represented as follows;

[:] [=! ] [;::J

=

(18)

- g

In (18), the difference between two

consecutive
measured/calculated phasors is used to estimate the system
back impedance.
< Corrections to System Frequency Variation and a
Coherent Set of Data using a Reference Phasor>
As shown in (18), the difference between two consecutive
measured/calculated phasors is desirable to estimate the
system back impedance. This difference should be from
natural load variation and not from system frequency variation.
In order to remove the effect of system frequency variation
from a set of phasors used in the estimation of system
impedance, a higher short circuit capacity substation with a
higher voltage is selected. At this substation, an additional
voltage phasor is measured and denoted as a system phasor.
Since the effects of frequency variation are common among all
the measurements. Hence, as shown in Fig. 4,

9
9

s(tL

a s(tl+Ll t

I 9

I
I

s to
s(tO+Ll t)

e sCtOtnLLt)

(15)

In order to enhance the accuracy and practical application

of the short circuit current estimation to a real world system,
the following modifications are proposed.
<Application of Difference between two Consecuitive
Phasors (DLS

can be shown as given in (17).

Where 1'l'=l'lu+ jl'lw'

In order to estimate back impedance Z'sy" one value is

calculated for each set of N phasors from different measuring
points. Once the back impedance is estimated, the short circuit
current can be estimated using (10) for each set of phasors.

'

Z'sys

Time

On solving (14), we have

C.

Z'sys

Phase Angle System Phasor Point S

V,
g
V;
g
RSYS

B=(XTxr' xry

From (16),

s(tl+nLl t)

s( i
s(ti+t.
s ti+nLl t

Measuring Point 1

1( O+Ll t)

Measuring Point 2

e HtOtnt. t)

2 to
2(tO+Ll t)

?(tOtnLLtt

I
I

hl interval between measuring

18
9
9

1 I+Ll t

1(tl+nt. t)

2(tl

2(tl+Ll t)

J
I

2(tl+nLl t)

2(ti
2(ti+t. tJ

I
I

/vi interval between measuring

19
9
9

tCti)
1 ti+t. t
1 ti+nLl t

9
9

2 ti+nLl t

Fig. 4 . An algorithm to remove system frequency effect.

these are removed by subtracting the changes in phase angles

due to the frequency variation of this system phasor from all
the other phasors measured at different points (substations).
After removing the effects of system frequency variation, the
measuring point 1 at time to is selected as a reference point.
The phase angle of this phasor is subtracted from a set of other
phasors as shown in Fig. 5.

Phase Angle ---

Measuring Point 1

III.

Measuring Point 2

VERIFICATION STUDIES ON REAL SYSTEM

Time
j to

A. Measurement Setup

liT

Actual measurement setup used in this research study is

shown in Fig.7.
The PMU (NCT2000 Toshiba, below referred to as NCT)

t1
(=to+lI T)

GPS
Base \oJtage 77kY
Base MVA IOMVA

Fig. 5 . An algorithm for referencing phasors.

As a result of this process, a set of coherent phasors is

obtained and this set is found to be helpful in realizing an
increased accuracy of the estimation process.

<Applying Filter to Remove Outlier Pharos Data >

Because it is a method of determining the short-circuit
current from data measured during normal load fluctuations,
there is a possibility that a set of phasors used in the estimation
process may have very small changes in their values. As these
changes may not be desirable for the estimation based on DLS
method shown in (18), there is a need to identify such
undesirable data (bad data) by devising a suit able filter
capable enough to trace

Fig. 7.

and personal computer (PC) based data collection at substation

A (measurement pointl) substation B (measuring point2) is
used to measure 77kV bus voltage, line currents. At substation
A, the 154kV bus voltage was also measured for the purpose
of the system phasor used to apply corrections for system
frequency variations. NCT is a PMU used to receive GPS
signals from satellites and the synchronization was applied for
all the measurements. The data collection was performed for 3
seconds every three minutes. The sampling frequency of
5760Hz was used in measurements and a data set of 180
phasors for 3 seconds (60Hz system : 60 phasors per second)
was prepared and used for the estimation process.
B.

10

15

20

25

std(delta V1) [v]

30

35

40

45

Fig. 6. Relation between standard deviation and estimation results.

and remove such outlier data. In order to design a filter to

remove such outliers, the results of short circuit current
estimation method for one day using DLS method are plotted
in Fig. 6. The horizontal axis is the standard deviation of the
difference in voltage phasors of the estimation data set, and the
vertical axis is the median of the estimation results from each
data set. A straight horizontal line in Fig. 6 is a maximum
short-circuit current obtained by off-line analysis. It is clear
from this figure, that the threshold value should be carefully
selected so that the appropriate data are not lost, whereas the
bad data are removed to have better results.
In this study, the threshold value is selected as 60% of one
day average, and it is generally found to provide good results.

Field test system.

Field Testing Results

The field testing of short circuit current estimation method

was performed on the actual power system in Fig. 7 and the
testing results for substation B are shown in Fig. 8 (24hours).
Each point in the plots represents the median (180 points for 3
seconds) of the estimation results of each data set. Fig. 8(a)
indicates the results of estimation method with no usage of the
system phasor (reference phasor) for any corrections as well as
no filtering for the outliers. Fig. 8(b) shows the estimation
results with use of the reference phasor but without filtering
the outliers. Fig. 8(c) shows the estimation results with use of
the reference phasor and filtering outliers. On comparing
these plots, the effectiveness of the proposed method is amply
clear and the estimation method suggested in this paper is
quite applicable to the real world system as its accuracy is
sufficient enough for use in the day-to-day power system
planning and operation work.

5
[5]

500
400

,300

[6]

200

o
"

100

16 Oct 1426 16 Oct 19,14

[7]

(a)Estimation resuits with no corrections and without filtering

500
400
g 300
-- -- ------
8
s 200
100
60%t00O!2::
0:

U
t::

[8]

[9]

M. Summer, B. Palethorpe, and W. P. Thomas, "Impedance

Measurement for Improved Power Quality-Part I:The Measurement
Technique," IEEE Trans. Power Delivery, vol.l9, No. 3, pp.I442-I448,
July 2004
Wilsun Xu, Emad E. Ahmed, Xiqin Zhang, and Xian Liu,
"Measurement
of Network Harmonic Impedances:
Practical
Implementation Issues and Their Solutions," IEEE Trans. Power
Delivery, vol. I7, No. I, pp.21 0-216, Jan. 2002.
Khoi Vu, Miroslav M. Begovic, Damir Novosel, and Murari Mohan
Saha, "Use of Local Measurements to Estimate Voltage-Stability
Margin," IEEE Trans. Power Systems, vol. 14, No.3, August 1999.
Krishnaswamy Srinivasan, Claude Lafond, and Roger Jutras, "Short
Circuit Current Estimation from Measurement of Voltage and Current
during Disturbances," iEEE Trans. industry Applications, vol. 33, No.4,
pp. I061-1064, July/Aug. 1997.
S. A Arefifar, and Wilsun Xu, "Online Tracking of Power System
Impedance Parameters and Field Experiences," IEEE Trans. Power
Delivery, vol. 24, No.4, pp.1781-1788, Oct. 2009.

(b )Estimation resLLits with corrections and without filtering

Estimated results
using proposed method

VI.

BIOGRAPHIES

S. C. Verma received his M. E. degree from nT Roorkee, India, in 1986. He

obtained his Ph.D. degree in Electrical Engineering from Nagoya Institute of
Technology, Japan, in 1994. Before coming to Japan, in 1990, he has been
working in an electric power company in India. In 1994, he joined Chubu
Electric Power Co. , Inc. Nagoya and since then, he has been engaged in R&D
studies concerning power system analysis. He is a senior member of IEEJ.

Yoshiki Nakachi
(c)Estimation results with corrections and filtering

Fig. 8. Estimation results using real measurements on actual

IV.

CONCLUSION

In this paper, a practical and accurate estimation method of

short-circuit current using PMU measurements obtained from
normal load fluctuation is proposed and its validity and
effectiveness was confirmed through the actual field testing
carried out on the real system. The features like preparing a set
of coherent phasors by using a reference phasor, corrections
for system wide frequency variation through the use of a
system phasor, and removal of outliers by employing a fIlter,
have been found to be very useful to increase the usefulness
and practical applicability of the proposed estimation method.
In the future, there is a plan to extend this work to develop
online systems using the proposed method for applications in
power system monitoring and control.
V.
[I]

[2]

[3]

[4]

REFERENCES

Elmo Price, "Practical considerations for implementing wide area

monitoring, protection and control," IEEE 59th Annual Conference for
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Ade Oliveira, J. C. Oliveira, J. W. Resende, and M. S. Miskulin,
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Measurements," iEEE Trans. Power Delivery, vol.6, No. 4, pp.I72I1726, Oct. 1991.
M. Nagpal, W. Xu.,
and J. Sawada, "Harmonic Impedance
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received the B. S. , M.S. degrees from Musashi Institute of

Technology, Tokyo, Japan, in 1990, 1992 respectively. He received his Dr.
Eng. degree from Nagoya Institute of Technology, Nagoya, Japan, in 2007.
He joined Chubu Electric Power Co. , Inc., Nagoya, Japan in 1992. After
working at R&D center, presently he has been with the power system
operation department. His main areas of interest are power system analysis,
power system stability control and voltage control. He is a member oflEEJ.

Yoshihiko Wazawa

received the B.S. degree from Tohoku University in

1985. He joined Chubu Electric Power Co. , Inc. Nagoya, in 1985. He has
been mainly engaged in operation and maintenance of protection, control and
SPS systems. At present, he has been engaged in R&D studies on power
system control, and power system analysis. He is a member oflEEJ.

Yoko Kosaka.

received her B.S. degree in applied physics from Nihon

University. She joined Toshiba Corporation in 1990. She is presently a
researcher of Power System Solution and Distribution System R&D
Department and is engaged in power system analysis. She is a member of
lEEl

Takenori Kobayashi (M'95)

received his B.S., M.S. and Ph.D. in electrical

engineering all from the University of Tokyo in 1989, 1991 and 1995
respectively. He has been with Toshiba Corporation since 1994 and is
currently in charge of smart grid and battery energy storage systems
engineering. He is a senior member of IEEJ.

Kazuya Ornata

received his M.S. and Ph.D. in electrical engineering from

Waseda University in 1980 and 1996 respectively. In 1980, he joined Toshiba
Corporation where he has been engaged in research and development work on
power system analysis and stabilizing control technology. He is a senior
member of IEEJ.

Yoshiki Takabayashi received his B.S. degree in electrical engineering from

Chiba University. He joined Toshiba Corporation in 1982. He has been
mainly engaged in system design and development business of the
supervision and control system for electric power systems. He is presently a
engineer of Power System Solution Engineering Group. He is a member of
lEEJ.