I-Corps: Efficient Software Tool for Improving Power Flow Analysis Functions

这一i-Corps项目的广泛影响/商业潜力正在促进电力基础设施的高效、可靠和安全运行。提高电力规划和调度的效率，大大改善了经济有效地传播能源资源的情况，还防止了不必要的污染排放和能源浪费。此外，它还防止电力需求和供应的实时平衡失败。该软件可以通过更好地预防输电拥堵和更周到的网络和风电场扩建计划，促进大规模风电整合。开发快速、准确的电力调度软件解决方案是过去几十年来电力公用事业公司、独立系统运营商和电网规划和咨询人员一直没有满足的需求。该项目旨在提供一种分析电网市场运行的软件工具，能够有效地改进客户的常用解决方案。i-Corps项目旨在提供一种创新的电力系统分析解决方案，在精度和计算效率方面显着改进现有的近似方法。在电力系统运行中，常用的潮流分析方法是一个明显的弱点。虽然交流潮流提供了最高的精度，但它不能满足计算速度的要求，而且在大型网络的情况下，使用这种方法是不现实的。另一方面，直流潮流通过对完整的交流潮流进行粗略的线性近似来提供高计算速度，其中关于电压分布和角度、导体损耗和无功平衡做出了不可靠的假设。这些假设会导致很大的误差和与交流潮流结果的偏差，特别是在重载条件下或在高阻性网络中。然而，电力系统运营商在各自的应用中仍然采用直流和交流潮流方法。在最优潮流的背景下改进潮流模型的求解技术可能会潜在地带来显著的能源成本节约。

The broader impact/commercial potential of this I-Corps project is promoting efficient, reliable and secure operation of electricity infrastructure. Improving efficiency in planning and dispatch of electric power leads to significant improvements in economically efficient dissemination of energy resources which also prevents unnecessary polluting emissions and energy waste. In addition, it prevents failures in real-time balancing of electricity demand and supply. The software may facilitate large-scale wind power integration by better prevention of transmission congestion and more considerate network and wind farm expansion plans. Developing a fast and accurate electric power dispatch software solution has been an unmet demand for the electric utilities, Independent System Operators and power grid planners and consultants for the past decades. This project is aimed at a software tool for analyzing the electric grid market operations that can efficiently improve the customer's commonly-used solutions.This I-Corps project intends to provide an innovative power system analysis solution which significantly improves the existing approximate methods in terms of accuracy and computational efficiency. The commonly-used power flow analysis methods represent a clear weakness in power system operations. Although AC power flow offers the highest accuracy, it does not meet the computational speed requirements, and in the case of large networks, using this method is not practical. On the other hand, DC power flow offers a high computational speed by a rough linear approximation of the full AC power flow, where unreliable assumptions are made regarding the voltage profile and angles, conductor losses, and reactive power balance. These assumptions lead to significant errors and deviations from AC power flow results, especially under heavy load conditions or in highly resistive networks. Nevertheless, power system operators still resort to using DC and AC power flow methods in the respective applications. Improving solution techniques for the power flow model in the context of optimal power flow could potentially lead to significant energy cost savings.