Review ofHPC Applications for Future Power System Analysis Tools

Abstract:
One of the major challenges in the energy sector is to ensure secure and sustainable energy supply. A growth in the usage of renewable resources which are usually connected at lower distribution levels will lead towards electricity networks that are more complex. Likewise, technology that will allow active demand participation has been developed and would be introduced in networks. It will enable that the part of the power demand of active customers could be shifted away from peak periods. This means that the number of network nodes with active devices will increase rapidly affected by a number of distributed generators and, even more, by utilization of smart meters and electric vehicles that can act both as a consumer and as a source/storage device. Consequently, operation of these new Smart Grids will require a step-change in capabilities of operational tools due to a considerable rise in the number of control variables and reduced time intervals between which generation outputs and prices are calculated. Calculating frequent prices and power flow for systems with a large number of nodes will require very fast computations. Therefore, as the power grid networks become more granulated and more intelligent, their operation and control will become even more challenging due to the size of the underling mathematical problems that need to be solved in various power systems analysis tools. The objective of this paper is to review ways in which High Performance Computing (HPC) can be used in power system analysis, and discuss possible further developments in this field.