AutoSynGrid: A MATLAB-based toolkit for automatic generation of synthetic power grids

Abstract

In this paper, we introduce a comprehensive MATLAB-based toolkit to automatically generate any number of synthetic power grids featuring the same statistical properties of realistic power grids. The AutoSynGrid toolkit takes into account electric topology, bus type, generation capacities, load settings, generation cost models, and transmission line capacities to generate synthetic cases, providing all necessary data for verity of analysis such as power flow and optimal power flow studies. The toolkit is highly parametrized, providing the flexibility for the user to choose different input options, such as reference system, loading level, generation cost model, and bus type entropy to generate synthetic power grid cases with given network size. In addition, we provide a validation framework for the AutoSynGrid toolkit based on topology metrics, electric parameters, state variables, interdependencies, and scaling properties. It examines the generated synthetic cases by using multiple validation metrics that are observed from realistic power grids to assure that they mitigate the predefined criteria. In addition, to measure the realism of generated synthetic cases the closeness factor is defined. The generated synthetic grids are also examined based on the proposed closeness factor using a number of generated random grids.