Continuation Power Flow: a Parameterization Technique and Adaptive Step Size Control

The electricity sector, especially in emerging countries, has experienced several transformations, mainly resulting from the increase in electricity demand. These events encourage more investment in the generation sector and cause increasing concerns with the development and improvement of tools for static voltage stability analysis of electrical power systems. This paper presents a new geometric parameterization technique for continuation power flow (CPF) that works based on the addition of a new plane formed by the variables of voltage magnitudes and total real power losses (Pa). The new plane features a linear aspect around the maximum loading point (MLP), eliminating the Jacobian matrix (J) singularity at the maximum loading point, allowing to obtain the solution trajectory (P-V curve) without any need to change the parameter, which is a common procedure in the currently available CPF. Intending to define a simple and efficient step size control procedure, the distance value between the center of the set of lines and the total real power losses is calculated. This value defines the appropriate step size for the system. The results obtained by applying the proposed technique to the IEEE 14-bus system and one real large system of the 904-bus show its effectiveness.