Identification of system vulnerabilities in the Ethiopian electric power system

The Ethiopian Electric Power (EEP) has been operating and managing the national interconnected power system with dispersed and geographically isolated generators, a complex transmission system and loads. In recent years, with an increasing load demand due to rural electrification and industrialization, the Ethiopian power system has faced more frequent, widely spread and long lasting blackouts. To slash the occurrence of such incidents, identifying the system vulnerabilities is the first step in this direction. In this paper, the vulnerability assessment is performed using indices called active power performance index (PI_p) and voltage performance index (PI_v). These indices provide a direct means of comparing the relative severity of the different line outages on the system loads and voltage profiles. Accordingly, it is found that the most severe line outages are those lines that interconnect the high load centered (Addis Ababa and Central regions) with the rest of the regional power systems. In addition, the most vulnerable buses of the network in respect of voltage limit violations are mainly found at the high load centers.