A predictor corrector algorithm in the parallel solution of power system dynamics

While software is being developed for automatically detecting parallelism in an otherwise serial code, concurrent research in developing parallel numerical algorithms is also useful. The authors compare the speedups obtained using both these approaches in the dynamic simulation of a power system. A sequential algorithm that can be automatically converted to execute in parallel is developed. An explicitly parallel algorithm for simulating the power system is also adapted. Both are multistep predictor corrector algorithms and are implemented on a Cray-2 with four processors. While the two speedups are comparable, it is believed that continued research in numerical algorithms and their practical implementation is warranted.<>