Steady-State Stand-Alone Power Flow Solvers for Integrated Transmission-Distribution Networks: A Comparison Study and Numerical Assessment

Maria Eliza Kootte and Cornelis Vuik
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Maria Eliza Kootte: Delft Institute of Applied Mathematcis, Delft University of Technology, 2628 CD Delft, The Netherlands
Cornelis Vuik: Delft Institute of Applied Mathematcis, Delft University of Technology, 2628 CD Delft, The Netherlands

Energies, 2021, vol. 14, issue 18, 1-19

Abstract: This paper compares and assesses several numerical methods that solve the steady-state power flow problem on integrated transmission-distribution networks. The integrated network model consists of a balanced transmission and an unbalanced distribution network. It is important to analyze these integrated electrical power systems due to the changes related to the energy transition. We classified the existing integration methods as unified and splitting methods. These methods can be applied to homogeneous (complete three-phase) and hybrid (single-phase/three-phase) network models, which results in four approaches in total. These approaches were compared on their accuracy and numerical performance—CPU time and number of iterations—to demonstrate their applicability on large-scale electricity networks. Furthermore, their sensitivity towards the amount of distributed generation and the addition of multiple distribution feeders was investigated. The methods were assessed by running power flow simulations using the Newton–Raphson method on several integrated power systems up to 25,000 unknowns. The assessment showed that unified methods applied to hybrid networks performed the best on these test cases. The splitting methods are advantageous when complete network data sharing between system operators is not allowed. The use of high-performance techniques for larger test cases containing multiple distribution networks will make the difference in speed less significant.

Keywords: load flow; steady-state; transmission; distribution; power systems; unbalanced; Newton–Raphson; integrated networks (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q Q0 Q4 Q40 Q41 Q42 Q43 Q47 Q48 Q49 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
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