Continuation power flow with adaptive stepsize control via convergence monitor

A continuation power flow method with adaptive step size is proposed. Two approaches are used to predict the step size. First, convergence monitor is proposed to predict step size. This step size is compared with the step sizes obtained by the first-order sensitivity of Q-generation and voltage with respect to a parameter. Whichever step size is smaller is chosen to reduce the possibility of divergence and to deal with discrete controls. Convergence monitor is capable of detecting possible divergence in corrector within three iterations. The method of detecting limit-induced bifurcation is proposed by means of sensitivity. The proposed approach is tested on a 300 bus system as well as a practical system. The performance shows that it needs much less time and does not need the critical buses preselected.