Parallel processing for the load flow of power systems: the approach and applications

A description is given of homotopy-based computational parallel algorithms for solving for all the roots of a system of algebraic polynomial equations. Also presented is a convenient polynomial representation of the load flow equations of power systems. The algorithm techniques are then applied to obtain all steady-state solutions of the load flow for five-bus and seven-bus power system networks. A special probability-one homotopy method is tailored for the load flow to reduce the computational complexity while still guaranteeing the finding of all solutions computationally. More importantly and practically, the numerical implementation of the solution procedures exploits inherent parallelism in the load flow equations to be efficiently executed on massively parallel distributed-memory multiprocessors