3/8/2021 Power Flow Analysis

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Power Flow Analysis

load flow analysis power flow analysis power flow analysis in power
systems power flow equations power systems Jul 11, 2019

Power flow, or load flow, is widely used in power system operation and
planning. The power flow model of a power system is built using the
relevant network, load, and generation data. Power engineers are
required to plan, design, and maintain the power system to operate
reliably and within safe limits. Numerous power flow studies are required
to ensure that power is adequately delivered at all times despite normal
load fluctuations and undesirable events such as contingencies. Daily
fluctuations in the power system operations cause power flow
mismatches at busbars. As a result, the busbars voltage magnitude and
angle adjust instantly until an equilibrium is reached between the load
and the transmitted power. This new equilibrium point can also be
obtained from simulation using power flow methods.

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Different Techniques to Solve

Power Flow Equations
Outputs of the power flow model include voltages at different buses, line
flows in the network, and system losses. These outputs are obtained by
solving nodal power balance equations. Since these equations are
nonlinear, the following iterative techniques are commonly used to solve
this problem.

Power flow studies consist in determining the voltage magnitude and

angle at each busbar until there is an equilibrium in active and reactive
power at which point power mismatches are insignificant. Calculating the
final values of the busbars voltage is not always straightforward
especially for heavily loaded and complex systems.

The starting point of solving power flow problems is to identify the

known and unknown variables in the system. Based on these variables,
buses are classified into three types: slack, generation, and load buses as
shown in the following table:

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Hello there! On a related topic, we previously wrote a blog

about Power Factor - An Overview. If this peaks your interest,
check it out and let us know what you think

Newton-Raphson Power Flow Method

Newton Raphson method is a numerical technique for solving non-linear
equations. It is often classified as iterative root finding scheme. The
reason it is called root finding is, it is geared towards solving equations
like f(x)=0 (or f(x)=0). The solution to such an equation, call it x* (or x*), is
clearly a root of the function f(x) (or f(x)). The first order Newton-
Raphson (NR) method is considered as the state of the art for power flow
calculations. This method has been widely used in industry applications.

It is iterative because it requires a series of successive approximations to

the solutions. The procedure is generally as follows. First, guess a
solution. Unless we are very fortunate, the guess will be, of course,
wrong. So, we determine an update to the "old" solution that moves to a
"new" solution with the intention that the "new" solution is closer to the
correct solution than was the "old" solution.

A key aspect to this type of procedure is the way we obtain the update. If
we can guarantee that the update is always improving the solution, such
that the "new" solution is in fact always closer to the correct solution
than the "old" solution, then such a procedure can be guaranteed to
work if only we are willing to compute enough updates, i.e., if only we
are willing to iterate enough times.

Advantages

Fast convergence if the initial guess is close to the solution

Easy to convert to multiple dimensions, can be used to polish a
root found by other methods
Large region of convergence
Time required for per iteration in Newton Raphson method is
larger than Gauss Seidel method but the overall time for iterative
process is less because of a smaller number of iterations for
convergence.

Disadvantages

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Each iteration takes much longer.

More complicated to code, particularly when implementing sparse
matrix algorithms.

Gauss-Seidel Power Flow Method

In Gauss Seidel method, the computations appear to be serial. Further,

each component of new iteration depends upon all previously computed
components. Updates cannot be done simultaneously. In addition to this,
new iteration depends on the order in which equations are examined. If
this ordering is changed, the components of new iteration (and not just
their order) also change. These limitations persuade engineers and
researchers to go for Newton Raphson method.

Advantages

Gauss Seidel method is easy to program.

Each iteration is relatively fast (computational order is proportional
to number of branches and number of buses in the system).
Acquires less memory space than NR method.

Disadvantages

Tends to converge relatively slowly, although this can be improved

with acceleration.
Has tendency to miss solutions, particularly on large systems.
Tends to diverge on cases with negative branch reactance
(common with compensated lines).
Need to program using complex numbers.

Fast Decoupled Power Flow Method

In high voltage transmission systems, the voltage angles between
adjacent buses are relatively small. In addition, X/R ratio is high. These
two properties result in a strong coupling between real power and
voltage angle and between reactive power and voltage magnitude. In
contrary, the coupling between real power and voltage magnitude, as
well as reactive power and voltage angle, is weak. Considering adjacent
buses, real power flows from the bus with a higher voltage angle to the

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bus with a lower voltage angle. Similarly, reactive power flows from the
bus with a higher voltage magnitude to the bus with a lower voltage
magnitude.

Fast-decoupled power flow technique includes two steps:

decoupling real and reactive power calculations.

obtaining of the Jacobian matrix elements directly from the Y-bus.

As the size of matrix becomes very large for a big bus system so for
faster and less memory allocation, we prefer decoupled load flow where
we take P independent of V and Q Independent of δ, and thus those
Jacobian elements are taken as zero.

Advantages

The convergence is faster than other methods.

The memory requirement is very less than the other methods like
as Newton Raphson method, Gauss-Seidel method, etc.
This method is less complicated than other methods, therefore it is
more easy method to calculate the power flow.
The number of iteration and size of equation used is less.

Disadvantages

Take more iterations though time needs for each iteration is less
than NR method
The accuracy of the fast-decoupled load flow is mainly dependent
on three factors:
System size and structure;
Convergence tolerances; and
Level of system Loading

Particularly in large systems with heavy loading the relatively small error
in the state variables may cause larger errors in real and reactive power
flow, but these errors are small in comparison with the line ratings. The
accuracy of the solution is a controllable parameter and it can be
improved by using a smaller convergence tolerance.

Comparison of the Load Flow Methods

Industry Application of Power Flow

Methods
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Commercial power systems are complicated. It is not possible to analyze

power flow through hand calculations. Physical models of power systems
were analyzed through network analyzers in laboratories between 1929
and early 1960. Afterwards, invention of digital computers replaced the
analog methods with numerical methods. Initially, linear methods were
proposed to analyze power flow analysis. Among these, Cramer's
method, Gauss elimination and LU factorization are notable. However,
these methods cannot handle complex, nonlinear and big power
systems. Therefore, iterative techniques i.e., Gauss Seidel method,
Newton Raphson method are developed to solve complex power
systems.

There are a number of very high-quality commercial power flow

programs on the market today, some of which include those developed
by the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI), Power Technologies
Incorporated (PTI), Operation Technology, Inc., and EDSA. Most of
today's commercial software packages are menu-driven from a Windows
environment. Few of the commonly used software are discussed briefly
as below:

ETAP software is used for simulation because of its extension of

real time intelligent power management systems for monitoring,
controlling, automating and optimizing power systems. It is a high
impact software used for power flow analysis is generation,
transmission and distribution systems of electric power
engineering.

PowerWorld Simulator is a software package designed to simulate

high voltage power systems up to 100,000 buses. PowerWorld uses
the Newton-Raphson iteration method, which provides an efficient
and accurate solution. It also computes the Jacobian (Admittance
Matrix), so that the one-line diagram characteristics can be ported
to other analysis programs.

CYME is a software which main objective is to analyze the steady-

state performance of the power system under various operating
conditions. It is the basic analysis tool for the planning, design and
operation of any electrical power systems, be they distribution,
industrial or transmission networks. The Power Flow module utilizes
state-of-the-art sparse matrix/vector methods and multiple
solution algorithms.
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Check out Power System Analysis Fundamentals Course in which we

briefly discussed "Power Flow Equations".

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