SI2-SSE: Foundations for MATPOWER as an Extensible Tool for Power Systems Research and Education

Cornell University, Ithaca NY

Investigators

Abstract

The electric power system is one of the most fundamental and critical infrastructures underlying modern society, and the economic, environmental and societal impacts of advances in its planning and operations are potentially enormous. MATPOWER is a set of open-source scientific software elements for electric power system simulation, analysis and optimization. MATPOWER is already widely used in its current form, especially for research and education. The purpose of this project is to restructure the internals of MATPOWER as well as software development platform to make it easier to customize and extend by its community of users and developers. This restructuring will serve to increase MATPOWER's future impact as a successful research tool for designing and analyzing the power systems of the future. As power grids evolve toward more sustainable, economically efficient and environmentally friendly systems, positioning MATPOWER to expand its role as a flexible research and educational tool in this arena of innovation and change has the potential for far reaching and transformative impact both nationally and globally. MATPOWER addresses some of the most fundamental classes of problems in power systems analysis, namely the power flow (PF), optimal power flow (OPF) and related problems used to determine the steady state voltages, currents and power flows arising from the interactions between system conditions, operator control actions and the laws of physics. The aim of this work is to broaden and extend MATPOWER's reach as a research-enabling tool for tackling future power systems problems in two specific ways. The first is to develop the project infrastructure needed to transition to and sustain a community-driven, collaborative development paradigm. The second is to redesign the core MATOWER software around a general modular architecture that will enable more flexible user customization and facilitate significant user contributions, while retaining and enhancing the simplicity that makes it attractive in education. Specifically, the new architecture will greatly simplify the process of adding arbitrary new device models, such as three-winding transformers, voltage dependent loads, flexible AC transmission system (FACTS) devices and more sophisticated models of HVDC lines. It will also facilitate the inclusion of additional controls, such as remote voltage regulation, switched shunts and transformer and phase shifter tap changing. Finally, it will serve as the basis to expand MATPOWER to handle three-phase, unbalanced network modeling, as required for many low-voltage distribution systems, opening the door for use in many additional current and emerging research areas.