Fast Newton-Raphson Power Flow Analysis Based on Sparse Techniques and Parallel Processing
Afshin Ahmadi, Melissa C. Smith, E.R. Collins, Vahid Dargahi, Shuangshuang Jin
Abstract
Power flow (PF) calculation provides the basis for the steady-state power system analysis and is the backbone of many power system applications ranging from operations to planning. The calculated voltage and power values by PF are essential to determining the system condition and ensuring the security and stability of the grid. The emergence of multicore processors provides an opportunity to accelerate the speed of PF computation and, consequently, improve the performance of applications that run PF within their processes. This paper introduces a fast Newton-Raphson power flow implementation on multicore CPUs by combining sparse matrix techniques, mathematical methods, and parallel processing. Experimental results validate the effectiveness of our approach by finding the power flow solution of a synthetic U.S. grid test case with 82,000 buses in just 1.8 seconds.