Analysis of the Load Flow Problem in Power System Planning Studies

Load flow is an important tool used by power engineers for planning, to determine the best opera-tion for a power system and exchange of power between utility companies. In order to have an ef-ficient operating power system, it is necessary to determine which method is suitable and efficient for the system’s load flow analysis. A power flow analysis method may take a long time and there-fore prevent achieving an accurate result to a power flow solution because of continuous changes in power demand and generations. This paper presents analysis of the load flow problem in power system planning studies. The numerical methods: Gauss-Seidel, Newton-Raphson and Fast De-coupled methods were compared for a power flow analysis solution. Simulation is carried out us-ing Matlab for test cases of IEEE 9-Bus, IEEE 30-Bus and IEEE 57-Bus system. The simulation re-sults were compared for number of iteration, computational time, tolerance value and conver-gence. The compared results show that Newton-Raphson is the most reliable method because i