OVNI: an object approach to real-time power system simulators

This paper presents the solution approach and implementation strategy followed in the development of the OVNI ("Object Virtual Network Integrator") power system simulator. OVNI's aim is to represent full-size power system networks for real-time and online simulation. To cope with the dimensions of the problem, partitioning techniques are required, both in the system solution and in the hardware implementation. OVNI implements the MATE concept ("multi-area tearing equivalent") for network partitioning. In addition to the considerable solution speedups that can be achieved, the MATE concept is particularly suited for software implementation using object-oriented techniques and for hardware implementation using parallel processing schemes.