An exact piecewise method for fault studies in interconnected networks

Ever-increasing size and complexity of electrical networks call for new computational tools to cope with serious challenges such as information handling and security, massive data processing, real-time analysis and control, etc. In particular, this paper tries to deal with these challenges in the field of fault studies. Actually, a piecewise or diakoptical solution procedure, corresponding to the decentralized nature of electrical networks, has been adopted using large change sensitivity (LCS) concept. It first modifies the prefault voltage profile across utilities and then modifies their nodal Zbus in such a way to reflect the effect of the whole network in local studies performed by individual utilities, i.e. an accurate federative analysis. Mathematical details of the proposed method as well as a numerical example will be presented. Practically, it has been implemented in an existing software package and simulation results for a typical network using this software are available at the end. Generally speaking, it can be used for distributed simulation of large-scale electrical networks across computer networks with the least investment on computational resources.