Classification and assessment of power system static security using decision tree and random forest classifiers

The power system static security classification and assessment is essential in order to identify the post‐contingency problems and take corrective measures and to protect the system from blackout. In this paper, application of two data mining classifiers have been proposed for the security classification and assessment of a multiclass security problem. To design the security problem, contingency analysis is carried out under N‐1 line outage, and static severity index (SSI) is computed, which is a function of the line overload and the voltage deviation using Newton–Raphson load flow method, considering the variable load and generating conditions. Corresponding to the computed values of SSI, the voltage, phase angle, Mega Volt Ampere line flow and so on, a 1 × 7 pattern vector is generated. The generated pattern vectors are used to design a multiclass security problem. The designed security pattern vectors are given as inputs to the decision tree (DT) and random forest (RF) model in order to classify the security status of the power system. The proposed classifiers are investigated on an IEEE 30‐bus test system. The classification accuracy of the DT and the RF are compared with state‐of‐the‐art classifier models, namely, multilayer perceptron (MLP), radial basis function (RBF), and support vector machine (SVM).The simulation results clearly indicate that the proposed DT and RF classifiers are more efficient, reliable, and out performs MLP, RBF, and SVM classifiers for the assessment of the security status of the power system. Hence, DT and RF classifiers are found to be suitable for online implementation. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.