Parallel three-phase load flow analysis for large scale unbalanced distribution networks

Abstract

This paper proposes parallel algorithm of a general three-phase load flow calculation based on symmetrical components. The proposed algorithm comprises of two part i.e. sequence admittance matrix construction and sequence decoupled algorithm for sequence networks solver which have three independent sub-problems corresponding to positive, negative, and zero-sequence networks. These two parts are solved concurrently using multi-core parallel processing. The IEEE 8500-node test feeder is used to test the robustness of the algorithm for large system problem. The large unbalanced load connected to the center-tapped transformer solved using an iterative forward and backward sweep analysis method based on voltage drop analysis. The result showed that parallel three-phase load flow produced execution speedup and proved the ability to handle large scale problems.