Technique for Continuation Power Flow Using the “Flat Start” and for Ill-Conditioned Systems

This paper presents a geometric parameterization technique for the continuation power flow that allows the complete tracing of P-V curves and the calculation of the maximum loading point of power systems, without singularity problems of Jacobian matrix (J). The technique will be started from the “flat start”, i.e., the voltage magnitude of all the buses PQ are placed in 1.0 p.u. and the angle bus voltage of all the buses are placed at 0o (zero degree). To eliminate the singularity has been added to the equation of a line passing through a point in the plane determined by the variable load factor and the sum of all the bus voltage magnitudes. The results obtained with the technique to ill-conditioned systems (11 buses), IEEE test systems (300 buses) and the 638-bus system corresponding to part of South-Southeast Brazilian system, improve the characteristics of the conventional method and extend the convergence region around the singularity