A novel power system instability detecting element for high voltage line protection relay is presented. Through the voltage and current at location of the protective relay and the line impedance parameter, the voltage of another terminal of the line can be calculated.The power system stability can be judged from the phasor angle difference between sampled voltage and the calculated voltage so as to lock distance protection on time.The instability detecting element proposed in the paper may satisfy such a characteristic. This instability detecting element is also self-adaptive to the swing period, which needs not to add setting item to the relay, and can be easily implemented.