Static Security Assessment: A Case Study of the Saudi National Grid

The static security assessment of the Saudi National Network helps to identify the weaknesses and potential threats and provides a comprehensive understanding of the network’s ability to address such incidents due to probable outages. This paper presents the static security assessment of the Saudi national grid with reference to the transmission line overloads and the bus voltage deviations in the system following the initiation of the specified contingencies. Critical contingencies are identified, and these are ranked on the basis of the limit violations of the line overloads and the bus voltage deviations obtained through the Newton-Raphson load flow analysis. The system loading conditions considered correspond to that of a typical day of the Hajj Pilgrimage period, during which millions of pilgrims from various parts of the country and also the world visit the Holy Mosque at Makkah. The preliminary investigations reveal that there are some transmission lines and certain substations requiring special attention to enhance the system security.