Next generation electromagnetic transient simulation tool for large-scale power systems with detailed equipment models

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Electrical power systems are the largest man-made geographically distributed nonlinear structures that are composed of a variety of equipment such as generators, transformers, transmission lines, customer loads, spanning thousands of kilometers. Electromagnetic transient simulation (EMT) tools are used analyze and solve major operational and control problems in power systems. EMT simulation of large-scale power systems consumes so much computational power that parallel programming techniques are urgently needed in this area. Currently available EMT simulation tools were designed to run on single-core CPUs, and therefore, cannot take advantage of the multi-core CPUs and many-core graphics processors (GPUs) to manage computational load. Massive-thread computing is one of the key developments that can increase the EMT computational capabilities substantially when the processing unit has enough hardware cores. The aim of this project is to develop a host of innovations towards implementing a parallel massive-thread EMT simulator for large-scale power systems on the GPU and multi-core CPU hardware architectures. The main features of this work is to design and build massive-thread models for various power system and power electronic components, finite element and finite difference time domain models, efficient numerical algorithms, advanced data analysis and visualization, and validation of the simulator. The project results are expected to prove the feasibility of a functional parallel massive-thread EMT simulator that can achieve computational speed-up in large-scale system simulation while using very detailed system component models. The main beneficiary of this project will be Manitoba HVDC Research Centre (MHRC) which can integrate the developed innovations into their flagship EMT simulation tool PSCAD/EMTDC. The experienced team of highly qualified engineers trained in this project will contribute to the ongoing advancement of the EMT simulation technology and may prove to be valuable future employees for MHRC.