Elements: MATPOWER for Integrated Smart Grid 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. A version of MATPOWER is widely used, especially for research and education. This Cyberinfrastructure for Sustained Scientific Innovation (CSSI) Elements award supports the research needed to transition MATPOWER to a new flexible internal modeling architecture. The new capabilities will enable MATPOWER to simulate and optimize integrated smart grid networks consisting of both transmission (balanced) and distribution (unbalanced) systems. These capabilities will serve to expand the scope of 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, optimal power flow, and related problems used to determine the steady state voltages, currents and power flows arising from the interactions among 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 restructure the MATPOWER internals around a new unified MATPOWER element model, vastly expanding the range of devices and controls modeled by MATPOWER and further increasing its customizability. The second is to implement the modeling of multiphase unbalanced systems and integrated balanced and unbalanced models. This will expand the scope of MATPOWER?s usefulness to many current and emerging research areas related to the modern smart grid, with its proliferation of decentralized control and distributed energy resources (DER), such as solar PV, plug-in hybrid electric vehicles, local energy storage, and various kinds of actively managed demand. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.