Author(s)

Olukayode A. Afolabi, Warsame H. Ali, Penrose Cofie, John Fuller, Pamela Obiomon, Emmanuel S. Kolawole

Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Prairie View A&M University, Prairie View, USA.

Load flow is an important tool used by power engineers for planning, to determine the best operation for a power system and exchange of power between utility companies. In order to have an efficient operating power system, it is necessary to determine which method is suitable and efficient for the system’s load flow analysis. A power flow analysis method may take a long time and therefore prevent achieving an accurate result to a power flow solution because of continuous changes in power demand and generations. This paper presents analysis of the load flow problem in power system planning studies. The numerical methods: Gauss-Seidel, Newton-Raphson and Fast Decoupled methods were compared for a power flow analysis solution. Simulation is carried out using Matlab for test cases of IEEE 9-Bus, IEEE 30-Bus and IEEE 57-Bus system. The simulation results were compared for number of iteration, computational time, tolerance value and convergence. The compared results show that Newton-Raphson is the most reliable method because it has the least number of iteration and converges faster.

Load Flow, Bus, Gauss-Seidel, Newton-Raphson, Fast Decoupled, Voltage Magnitude, Voltage Angle, Active Power, Reactive Power, Iteration, Convergence

Afolabi, O. , Ali, W. , Cofie, P. , Fuller, J. , Obiomon, P. and Kolawole, E. (2015) Analysis of the Load Flow Problem in Power System Planning Studies. Energy and Power Engineering, 7, 509-523. doi: 10.4236/epe.2015.710048.