Thesis (DTech (Electrical Engineering))--Cape Peninsula University of Technology, 2016. / Electric power systems are being operated closer to their designed stability limits due to the constraints caused by the continuous increase in system loading, and the lack of new power stations and transmission network infrastructure to support this increase in system loading. This coupled with the practice of long distance bulk power transmission and cascading contingencies, makes system instability and consequently blackouts inevitable. In such scenarios, system instabilities like voltage instability becomes a serious threat to the secure operation of the power system, and voltage collapse (system-wide blackouts) are prone to occur. This is often compounded by the unavailability of real-time system measurements for situational awareness from the existing Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA)/Energy Management System (EMS) platforms which are usually based on unsynchronized SCADA measurements with a slow reporting rate of 1 measurement every 2-10 seconds. This Doctoral thesis proposes non-iterative algorithms and methods of solution based on the IEEE C37.118 synchrophasor measurements from Phasor Measurement Units (PMUs) with a high reporting rate of up to 200 measurements every second (200 fps) for voltage stability assessment and automated wide area Centralised Protection/Control (CPC) against catastrophic voltage instabilities/blackouts in power systems. Extended formulations are proposed for the Optimal Placement of PMUs (OPP) in power systems with respect to voltage stability assessment. The impact of zero injection buses, critical buses, and PMU redundancy is considered in the formulation of the OPP problem solution. The extended formulations made use of Binary Integer programming (BIP) and Modal Participation Factors (MPFs) derived from the eigenvalues of the power flow Jacobian.