Evaluating Feasibility within Power Flow

Abstract: Recent development of techniques that improve the convergence properties of power flow simulation have been demonstrated to facilitate scaling to large system sizes (80k+ buses). However, the problem remains to reliably identify cases that are infeasible, system configurations that have no solution. In this paper, we use the circuit theoretic approach based on adjoint networks to evaluate the feasibility of a power flow test case and further locate and quantify the source of infeasibility in the cases operating beyond the tip of the nose curve. By creating infeasibility current source models that are added to each node of the system model and further coupling each source to its corresponding node of the adjoint network, any locations of insufficient real or reactive power are captured by a non-zero response of the adjoint network. Furthermore, it is shown that the proposed joint simulation of power flow and its adjoint network models provide the optimally minimized currents that can be later utilized to inform corrective actions to restore the feasibility of power flow problems.