An improved constraint-inference approach for causality exploration of power system transient stability

Abstract Transient stability is the key aspect of power system dynamic security assessment, and data-driven methods are becoming alternative measures of assessment. The current data-driven methods only construct correlations between variables while neglecting causal relationships. Therefore, they face problems such as poor robustness, which restrict their practical application. This paper introduces an improved constraint-inference approach for causality exploration of power system transient stability. Firstly, a causal structure discovery method of power system transient stability is proposed based on a PC-IGCI algorithm, which addresses the shortage caused by Markov equivalence and massive variables. Then, a relative average causal effect index is proposed to reveal the relationship between relative intervention strength and causal effects. The results of a case study verify that the proposed method can identify the causal structure between the transient stability variables entirely based on data. In addition, the causal effect sorting between “cause” and “outcome” of transient stability variables is revealed. This paper provides a new approach for data mining to uncover the causal mechanisms between variables in power systems and expand the capabilities of data-driven methods in power system application.