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Recent events, such as the Northeast Blackout of 2003, have highlighted the need for accurate real-time stability assessment techniques to detect when an electric power system is on the brink of voltage collapse. While many techniques exist, most techniques are computationally demanding and cannot be used in an on-line application. A voltage stability index (VSI) can be designed to estimate the distance of the current operating point to the voltage marginally stable point during the system operation. In this research work, a new VSI was developed that not only can detect the system voltage marginally stable point but also is computationally efficient for on-line applications. Starting with deriving a method to predict three types of maximum transferable power of a single source power system, the new VSI is based on the three calculated load margins. In order to apply the VSI to large power systems, a method has been developed to simplify the large network behind a load bus into a single source and a single transmission line given the synchronized phasor measurements of the power system variables and network parameters. The simplified system model, to which the developed VSI can be applied, preserves the power flow and the voltage of the particular load bus. The proposed voltage stability assessment method, therefore, provides a VSI of each individual load bus and can identify the load bus that is the most vulnerable to voltage collapse. Finally, the new VSI was tested on three power systems. Results from these three test cases provided validation of the applicability and accuracy of the proposed VSI.