Journal Article

A Method for Identification and Adjustment of Key Variables for Power Flow Convergence in Bulk Power Systems Based on Unbalanced Power Characteristics of Intermediate Power Flow

Fan, Yuxi, Zhou, Yibo

2026

Overview

In the operation mode arrangement of bulk power systems, unreasonable reactive power injection data at nodes tend to result in power flow calculation non-convergence. Owing to the extremely high dimension of the variable space and the heterogeneous impacts of different variables on power flow convergence, it is imperative to accurately identify the key variables inducing non-convergence and provide physical justifications. For this purpose, this paper proposes a data-driven key variable identification and adjustment method: firstly, based on the blocking cut-set theory and the characteristic that the active unbalanced power ΔP of intermediate power flow exhibits opposite signs at the sending and receiving ends of the cut-set, a blocking cut-set identification method leveraging the characteristics of the active unbalanced power of intermediate power flow is developed; secondly, relying on the feature that the reactive unbalanced power ΔQ of intermediate power flow is less than zero, a key variable identification method based on the characteristics of the reactive unbalanced power of intermediate power flow is presented; finally, a key variable adjustment method grounded in the numerical value of ΔQ is proposed. The validity of the proposed approach was validated via simulated computations using both the IEEE 39 bus system and a practical bulk power system.

• Publisher: MDPI AG
• Subject: Analysis / blocking cut-set / China / Cognition & reasoning / data-driven / Electric power systems / Identification / intermediate power flow / Knowledge / Methods / power flow convergence adjustment / power flow non-convergence / Set theory / unbalanced power / Variables