International Journal of Latest Trends in Engineering and Technology (IJLTET)

Optimal Load Flow Analysis in Radial

Network Using Matlab
Ram Kishore Pal
M.Tech Student, Electrical & Electronics Engineering
Oriental University, Indore, M.P., India

Rakesh Singh Lodhi

Electrical & Electronics Engineering
Oriental University, Indore, M.P., India

Abstract-This paper presents a Gauss-Seidel method to solve the power flow problem in radial distribution systems.
It is useful for planning, operation, economic scheduling and exchange of power between utilities. The load flow case
problem has been successfully solved for radial distribution systems using Gauss-Seidel load flow method. Radial
distribution system program has been run with different distributed locations and obtained power flow and line
losses in each distribution. The line losses have also been reduced by taking the remedial action by augmentation of
conductor size and results obtained through MATLAB programming.

Keywords- Radial network, Gauss-Seidel method, MATLAB

I. INTRODUCTION

A country in a fast developing phase must reliably meet the energy demand of all the sectors of the society for
different needs with safe, convenient, quality power with competitive rates in a sustainable manner to have an
energy secured future.
In the modern age of civilization the consumption of energy in domestic, industrial and agriculture all over the
world has increased tremendously. The energy is produced at the locations where necessary raw material is
available economically and safely i.e. pithead power station. This resulted in evolution of large central energy
generating stations far away from the load centers with elaborate transmission and distribution network.
Therefore a reliable, stable and secured power system configuration is required for quality power. For this
purpose load flow analysis is carried out to find the values of current, voltage, active power and reactive volt-
amperes at various points in a power system under normal steady state conditions.
Load flow studies are required to be done to ensure best operation and control with provisions of future load
growth. The effects of additional expected loads, new addition of generating plants, setup of new lines and new
interconnections etc are examined before these are actually installed. This enables for maintaining the power
system stability at rated voltage profile with minimum level of power loss. The study analysis requires the
mathematical formulation of the model of load flow problem involving a set of non linear algebraic or
differential equations with lot of calculation works to find out the solution of these equations. The main object
of this paper is to present optimal load flow solution of the radial distribution systems.

II. LOAD FLOW ANALYSIS

One of the most common computational procedures used in power system analysis is the load flow calculation.
Load flow studies determine the voltage, current, active and reactive power in a power system. the study
analysis alarms about the contingency conditions such as the loss of a generator, a transmission line, a
transformer or a load, overloads or steep falls in the voltage levels. .
A. Load Flow Equation
To formulate the active and reactive power entering a bus, we need to define the following quantities. Let the

Vi ‘G i Vi cos G i  j sin G i
voltage at the ith bus be denoted by
Vi (1)

Yii ‘T ii Yii cosT ii  j sin T ii Gii  jBii

self admittance at bus-i as
Yii (2)

Yij ‘T ij Yij cosT ij  j sin T ij Gij  jBij

mutual admittance between the buses i and j can be written as
Yij (3)

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 International Journal of Latest Trends in Engineering and Technology (IJLTET)

Yi1V1  Yi 2V2    YinVn

Let the power system contains a total number of n buses. The injected current at bus-i is given as
Ii

¦Y V
n (4)
ik k
k 1

¦Y V
The complex power at bus-i

Pi  jQi
n
Vi I i Vi ik k

¦Y V
k 1

Vi cos G i  j sin G i cosT ik  j sin T ik cos G k  j sin G k

n

ik k (5)

¦ Y VV
k 1

cos G i  j sin G i cosT ik  j sin T ik cos G k  j sin G k

n

ik i k
k 1

cos G i  j sin G i cosT ik  j sin T ik cos G k  j sin G k

Note that

cos G i  j sin G i >cos T ik  G k  j sin T ik  G k @

cos T ik  G k  G i  j sin T ik  G k  G i

¦ Y VV
Therefore substituting in (5) we get,

cos T ik  G k  G i
n
Pi ik i k (6)

¦ YikViVk sin T ik  G k  G i
k 1
n
Qi (7)
k 1
This is load flow equation.

PGi  PLi
Then the total real power injected in bus-i is
Pi ,inj (8)

'Pi Pi ,inj  Pi , calc PGi  PLi  Pi ,calc (9)

Let the injected power calculated by the load flow program be Pi,calc. Then the mismatch

'Qi Qi ,inj  Qi ,calc QGi  QLi  Qi ,calc (10)

Similarly, the mismatch between the reactive power and calculated values is given by

The purpose of the load flow is to minimize the above two mismatches. It is to be noted that (6) and (7) are used
for the calculation of real and reactive power in (9) to (10).

III. GAUSS-SEIDEL METHOD

Because of the nonlinearity and the difficulty involved in the analytical expressions for the above power flow
equations, numerical iterative technique is used.
The Gauss-Seidel Method is an iterative technique for solving the load flow problem, by successive estimation
of the node voltages.
The steps of a computational algorithm are given below:
Step-1: With the load profile known at each bus i.e. PD, QD are known, allocate Pca and Qca to all generating
stations.
Step-2: Assembly of bus admittance matrix YBUS with the line and shunt admittance data stored in the
computer, YBUS is assembled by using the rule for self and mutual admittances.
Step-3: Iterative computation of bus voltages (Vij= 2, 3 … . , n): to start the iterations a set of initial voltage
values is assumed.
Step-4: Computation of slack bus power: substitution of all bus voltages computed in step 3 along with Vi yields
S*= P- jQ.
Step-5: Computation of line flows and line losses: this is the last step in the load flow analysis wherein the
power flows on the various lines of the network are computed. Consider the lines connecting buses i and k.

IV. OPTIMAL POWER FLOW PROBLEMS-SOLUTION TECHNIQUES

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 International Journal of Latest Trends in Engineering and Technology (IJLTET)

A simple radial electric system of 33 KV ts shown in Figure 1. The radial electric system model has one
generator, one transmission line and one substation transformer feeding a distribution circuit. The feeder has 10
loads and 10 distributed resource locations positioned at different points along the feeder. We have tested the
analysis software for this system with basic parameters as per the standards. Line impedance is marked in per
unit on a 100MVA base. The load flow solution is obtained through Gauss-Seidel method as below:

Fig.1. Electric radial network

Table-1 Bus data(Input)

Bus Bus Voltage Angle Load Generator

No Code KV Degree MW MVAR MW MVAR
1 3 1 0 0 0 0 0
2 0 1 0 0 0 0 0
3 0 1 0 0.01 0.003 0 0
4 0 1 0 0.01 0.003 0 0
5 0 1 0 0.01 0.003 0 0
6 0 1 0 0.01 0.003 0 0
7 0 1 0 0.01 0.003 0 0
8 0 1 0 0.01 0.003 0 0
9 0 1 0 0.01 0.003 0 0
10 0 1 0 0.01 0.003 0 0
11 0 1 0 0.01 0.003 0 0
12 0 1 0 0.01 0.003 0 0

Table- 2, Line Data(Input)

From to R+jX
Bus Bus PU
1 2 0.0357+0.57j
2 3 .08+0.17j
3 4 .08+0.17j
4 5 .08+0.17j
5 6 .08+0.17j

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 International Journal of Latest Trends in Engineering and Technology (IJLTET)

6 7 .08+0.17j
7 8 .08+0.17j
8 9 .08+0.17j
9 10 .08+0.17j
10 11 .08+0.17j
11 12 .08+0.17j

A. Solution- Power flow program for Radial power system

No of iteration= 66
Table -3 Load flow Bus status
Load Generator
Bus Type Voltage angle
MW MVAR MW MVAR
1 3 1 0 0 0 6.0786 2.8418
2 0 0.9826 -1.9711 0 0 0 0
3 0 0.973 -2.4901 1 0.3 0 0
4 0 0.9644 -2.9595 1 0.3 0 0
5 0 0.957 -3.3802 1 0.3 0 0
7 0 0.9449 -4.0798 1 0.3 0 0
8 0 0.9402 -4.3601 1 0.3 0 0
9 0 0.9363 -4.5949 1 0.3 0 0
10 0 0.9333 4.7841 1 0.3 0 0
11 0 0.9311 -4.9273 1 0.3 0 0
12 0 0.9297 -5.024 1 0.3 0 0

Table-4: Line Losses

Line From To Loss Loss
# Bus Bus (MW) (MVAR)
2 2 3 0.039 0.082
3 3 4 0.031 0.065
4 4 5 0.024 0.051
5 5 6 0.018 0.039
6 6 7 0.014 0.029
7 7 8 0.01 0.021
8 8 9 0.007 0.014
9 9 10 0.004 0.009
10 10 11 0.002 0.005
11 11 12 0.001 0.002
Total 0.163 0.574

MATLAB program was run on the distribution feeder model, shown in Fig 1. The feeder had a total load of 10
MW and 3 MVAR with 1 MW and 0.3 MVAR at each load point. Data processing through MATLAB
programming gave following results.

Table-5 RDS result data at a glance

BUS Data
S. No. Data
1 Iterationation 66
2 Total Load Bus active power in MW 10
3 Total Load Bus Reactive power in MVAR 3

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 International Journal of Latest Trends in Engineering and Technology (IJLTET)

4 Total Generation Bus active power in MW 6.0786

Total Generation Bus Reactive power in MVAR 2.8418
5
Line Losses
1 Total MW Line Losses 0.163
2 Total MVAR Line losses 0.574

Fig.2 Graph between No of lines V/s line loss

VI. REMEDIAL ACTION FOR REDUCTION OF LINE LOSSES

With the available data structure the remedial action for reduction of line losses is proposed by augmentation of
the conductor size and results observed through Matlab programming as under:
Section wise resistance and reactance are given as shown in table 2:
Now the reduction of line losses are proposed by increasing cross sectional area of the conductor having the
configuration in the generator bus R+jX=0.35+0.57j and in the section of radial feeder from bus no 1 to 4 as
R+jX=0.35+0.17j while in the remaining section the size of conductor would remain the same as given in data
as 0.08+0.17j in the section of the feeder from the bus no 5 to 12. The improved results are obtained in terms of
reduced line losses as shown in table 8.
It may be seen that as per the given data, the losses are computed as 0.163MW/0.574MVAR and with the
remedial action taken as indicated above, the improved results are obtained in terms of reduced line losses to the
extent of 0.105MW/ 0.571 MVAR as shown in table 8 below,

Table-6, Load flow Bus status

Load Generator
Bus Type Voltage angle
MW MVAR MW MVAR
1 3 1 0 0 0 5.9507 2.9424
2 0 0.982 -1.9279 0 0 0 0
3 0 0.9754 -2.5092 1 0.3 0 0
4 0 0.9694 -3.0316 1 0.3 0 0
5 0 0.9639 -3.4976 1 0.3 0 0
6 0 0.9571 -3.8509 1 0.3 0 0
7 0 0.9512 -4.1607 1 0.3 0 0
8 0 0.9462 -4.4277 1 0.3 0 0
9 0 0.9421 -4.6521 1 0.3 0 0
10 0 0.939 -4.834 1 0.3 0 0
11 0 0.9367 -4.9731 1 0.3 0 0
12 0 0.9353 -5.0686 1 0.3 0 0

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 International Journal of Latest Trends in Engineering and Technology (IJLTET)

Table-7: Line Losses

Line From To Loss Loss
# Bus Bus (MW) (MVAR)
1 1 2 0.013 0.251
2 2 3 0.014 0.081
3 3 4 0.012 0.065
4 4 5 0.009 0.052
5 5 6 0.019 0.04
6 6 7 0.014 0.03
7 7 8 0.01 0.021
8 8 9 0.007 0.014
9 9 10 0.004 0.009
10 10 11 0.002 0.005
11 11 12 0.001 0.002
Total 0.163 0.574

Fig.3 Graph between No of lines V/s line losses

Table-8: RDS result data after remedial action

BUS Data
S. No. Data
1 Iterationation 65
2 Total Load Bus active power in MW 10
3 Total Load Bus Reactive power in MVAR 3
4 Total Generation Bus active power in MW 5.9507
5 Total Generation Bus Reactive power in MVAR 2.9424
Line Losses
1 Total MW Line Losses 0.105
2 Total MVAR Line losses 0.571

It may be seen that as per the given data the losses are computed as 0.163MW/0.574MVAR MVAR and with
the remedial action taken as indicated above, the improved results are obtained in terms of reduced line losses to
the extent of 0.105MW/ 0.571 MVAR shown in fig.3.

VII. CONCLUSION

The load flow case problem has been successfully solved for radial system through Gauss-Seidel method. This
includes formation of an Algorithm which is basically a power iterative method This scheme reduces lot of
memory space and processing time as it minimizes the search process. Thus it is a simple and efficient method
to solve the power flow problem in radial distribution systems. The solution of the case problem is obtained
through Matlab Programming. After getting the solution, line losses have been reduced by taking the remedial
action of augumentation of the conductor size which shows the significance of the method.

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