  The operating status of power systems is influenced by growing varieties of
factors, resulting from the developing sizes and complexity of power systems;
in this situation, the modelbased methods need be revisited. A data-driven
method, as the novel alternative, on the other hand, is proposed in this paper:
it reveals the correlations between the factors and the system status through
statistical properties of data. An augmented matrix, as the data source, is the
key trick for this method; it is formulated by two parts: 1) status data as the
basic part, and 2) factor data as the augmented part. The random matrix theory
(RMT) is applied as the mathematical framework. The linear eigenvalue
statistics (LESs), such as the mean spectral radius (MSR), are defined to study
data correlations through large random matrices. Compared with model-based
methods, the proposed method is inspired by a pure statistical approach,
without a prior knowledge of operation and interaction mechanism models for
power systems and factors. In general, this method is direct in analysis,
robust against bad data, universal to various factors, and applicable for
real-time analysis. A case study, based on the standard IEEE 118-bus system,
validates the proposed method.
