Graph-based solution for smart grid real-time operation and control

Under the envisioned smart grid paradigm, there is an increasing demand for a fast, accurate, and efficient power flow solution for distribution system operation and control. Various solution techniques have been proposed, each with its own unique formulation, solution methodology, advantages, and drawbacks. Motivated by challenges associated with the integration of renewable distributed energy resources and electric vehicles into distribution systems and further by the speed and convergence limitations of existing tools, this paper presents a novel graph-based power flow solution for smart grid's real-time operation and control, named Flow-AugmentationPF algorithm. The proposed method formulates a power flow problem as a network-flow problem and solves it by using a maximum-flow algorithm, inspired by the push-relabel max-flow technique. The performance of the proposed algorithm is tested and validated using several benchmark networks of different sizes, topologies, and parameters and compared against the most commonly used solution techniques and commercial software packages, namely PSS/E and PSCAD. The proposed formulation is simple, accurate, fast, yet computationally efficient, as it is based on matrix-vector multiplication, and is also scalable, considering the formulation works as a graph-based method, which, inherently, allows for parallel computation for added computational speed.