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

I-Corps项目的更广泛影响/商业潜力是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，可大大提高能源的经济效率，从而防止不必要的污染排放和能源浪费。此外，它还可以防止电力需求和供应的实时平衡故障。该软件可以通过更好地防止传输拥塞和更周到的网络和风电场扩展计划来促进大规模的风力发电整合。在过去的几十年里，开发快速准确的电力调度软件解决方案一直是电力公司，独立系统运营商和电网规划人员和顾问的未满足需求。本项目旨在开发一个分析电网市场运行的软件工具，能够有效地改进客户常用的解决方案。该I-Corps项目旨在提供一种创新的电力系统分析解决方案，该解决方案在准确性和计算效率方面显着提高了现有的近似方法。常用的潮流分析方法在电力系统运行中存在明显的缺陷。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，并且在大型网络的情况下，使用这种方法是不实用的。另一方面，直流潮流通过对整个交流潮流的粗略线性近似提供了很高的计算速度，其中对电压分布和角度，导体损耗和无功平衡进行了不可靠的假设。这些假设导致与交流潮流结果的显著误差和偏差，特别是在重负载条件下或在高电阻网络中。然而，电力系统运营商仍然在各自的应用中使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导致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.