Real-time simulation for power systems based on parallel computing-an empirical study

Computer simulation is a versatile and commonly used tool for the design and evaluation of systems with different degrees of complexity. Power distribution systems and electric railway networks are areas for which computer simulations are being heavily applied. A dominant factor in evaluating the performance of a software simulator is its processing time, especially in the cases of real-time simulation. Parallel processing provides a viable mean to reduce the computing time and is therefore suitable for building real-time simulators. In this paper, the authors present different issues related to solving a power distribution system with parallel computing based on a multiple-CPU server and they concentrate, in particular, on the speed-up performance of such an approach.