Development of a Toolbox for Alternative Transient Program Automatic Case Creation and Execution Directly From a Technical Database

Assessing the transient behavior of electric power transmission/distribution systems, when they are subjected to major disturbances such as lightning discharges, is an essential procedure to ensure the operational security of these systems, in order to supply good quality power to all consumers. Electromagnetic transient studies are routinely performed in the planning and operation phases of these systems, by using world widely known computer programs, among which stands out the Alternative Transient Program (ATP), via its graphical interface ATPDraw. However, preparing files for running case studies by using ATPDraw can become a time-consuming and human error-prone task. To overcome this drawback, this paper presents a toolbox for automatic generation and execution of Alternative Transient Program input files based on information directly obtained from technical databases of distribution utilities. This toolbox aims to reduce modeling time and susceptibility to human errors in the process of describing the grid in the software input file, which constitute the biggest obstacles to the extensive use of this program in real electric transmission/distribution networks. For the toolbox validation, a comparison was made between the input file generated by the ATPDraw auxiliary graphic interface and the file generated by the proposed toolbox by using the IEEE 13-bus and IEEE 34-bus test feeders. Besides that, the simulation results of both feeders for both softwares were compared, so that the correct operation of the Alternative Transient Program automatic case creator and executor proposed in this article were proved. In addition, the automatic generation of ATP cases for larger grids is exemplified with the IEEE 123-bus test feeder.