STTR Phase I: A Fast and Efficient Power System Dynamic Simulator

The broader impact/commercial potential of this Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) Phase I project includes a significant impact on the electric power contingency analysis conducted by industries around the globe. The proposed algorithm can be used by power system planning units, operators, utility companies, universities, and research centers and provides designers, engineers, and scientists with the opportunity of a considerable reduction in computation efforts in performing power grid dynamic simulations, especially in the grids with high penetration of renewable and small-scale generators. It allows conducting more studies in shorter time and leads to significant personnel and equipment cost reduction. In addition, the proposed algorithm is a significant step forward towards realizing a real-time power system analyzer, which can be used to alleviate the adverse effects of faults and disturbances in small and large electric power systems. Thus, the proposed algorithm potentially helps enhance modern power system reliability and resiliency by providing a fast and accurate analysis of the system under various possible contingencies. As the power grid is one of the most important and fundamental infrastructures in each society, the proposed project will directly enhance social welfare. This Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) Phase I project will develop a software program for dynamic analysis of power grids. In electric power industries, grid simulators are vital tools to evaluate and analyze dynamic behavior of the grid. Power grids are large-scale networks that are mathematically modeled by thousands of variables and equations. Analysis of such a large number of variables and equations is very time-consuming. Integration of intermittent renewable energy resources as well as small-scale low-inertia generators to modern power grids make the network analysis even more challenging. In the proposed algorithm (to become a software program) a novel mathematical solver is proposed that significantly reduces the computations required to solve the well-known differential-algebraic equations describing power systems. The proposed algorithm contributes to the reduction of the size of the Jacobian matrix and removal of the error loop in the power grid dynamic simulations. These improvements significantly increase the speed of the proposed software program in analyzing dynamic behavior of power grids when compared to the available methods. Preliminary studies show that the proposed power grid simulator can perform at least 30 times faster than the standard Newton-Raphson algorithm when simulating large grids with significant number of generators.