Splitting strategies for islanding operation of large-scale power systems using OBDD-based methods

System splitting problem (SS problem) is to determine proper splitting points (or called splitting strategies) to split the entire interconnected transmission network into islands ensuring generation/load balance and satisfaction of transmission capacity constraints when islanding operation of a system is unavoidable. For a large-scale power system, its SS problem is very complicated in general because a combinatorial explosion of strategy space happens. This paper mainly studies how to find proper splitting strategies of large-scale power systems using an ordered binary decision diagrams (OBDD)-based three-phase method. Then, a time-based layered structure of the problem solving process is introduced to make this method more practical. Simulation results on IEEE 30- and 118-bus networks show that by this method, proper splitting strategies can be given quickly. Further analyses indicate that this method is effective for larger-scale power systems.