Object-oriented development of software systems for power system simulations

The software systems developed for power system simulations have evolved into such complicated systems that the applied design practices appear inadequate to support further enhancement and maintenance. The major obstacles stem directly or indirectly from the conventional function-oriented software development methodologies. To overcome the drawbacks of these methodologies, this paper proposes applying an object-oriented technology for power system software development. As an illustration of this approach, the object modeling technique (OMT), an object-oriented software development methodology, is used to develop a distribution network analysis system. With this technique, a generic distribution circuit object model (DCOM) is designed based on the real-world concepts and implemented with object-oriented programming techniques. The developed DCOM is capable of supporting a wide range of distribution applications and allowing modification and maintenance over a long period of time. The performed case study has demonstrated that object-oriented technology, when applied to each stage of software development, can help achieve complicated tasks in power system simulations.