A Web based Computational Architecture for Power Systems Analysis

There are many phenomena that can compromise power systems operation, and they all need to be carefully analyzed in order to evaluate their impact on the security and reliability levels of the electrical networks. This process, known in technical literature as power system contingencies analysis, requires the estimation of the actual network state and the solution of the system state equations in order to classify critical events that could lead to system vulnerabilities. This analysis requires large computational efforts in terms of both the number of case study to analyze, several hundreds for medium complexity networks, and the data sifting needed for checking operational limits violations. The entire computation requires, moreover, computation times typically less than few minutes for the information to be useful. To address this problem, in the paper a distributed architecture based on Web and Grid computing is proposed. The architecture integrates a network of TCP/IP based remotely controlled units distributed in the most critical sections of the electrical network for fields data acquisition and dynamic loading of power equipments, a grid computing based solution engine for on-line contingencies analysis, and a web-based interface for graphical synoptic and reporting development. Experimental studies demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed solution.