Delaunay Triangulation Based Wide-Area Visualization of Electric Transmission Grids

Abstract

This paper presents a Delaunay triangulation based technique to develop planar visualizations to better show the overall flow of power in large-scale electric grids. One of the challenges with analyzing large-scale electric grids is maintaining an understanding of the overall electric grid state, including the grid's flow pattern. The paper's algorithm addresses this by first aggregating the buses into groups. Then a Delaunay triangulation is used to create a planar graph, followed by a mapping of the transmission line flows onto this graph. Finally the flows are visualized with dynamically sized line thicknesses and/or flow arrows. Results are demonstrated using several example systems ranging in size from seven to 82,000 buses.