Successive power flows with adaptive step‐length increments for fast approximation of the maximum loading point

Abstract

This study is concerned with the problem of computing the maximum loading point (MLP) in large-scale power systems. A modified asymptotic numerical method (ANM) with λ-parameterisation is used to fast approximate the MLP, which needs to solve a successive of power flows with adaptive load and generation increments. The ANM with Newton corrections is used to deal with the problem of reactive limits violations. The saddle-node bifurcation is identified by the accumulation of small step-lengths. The proposed algorithm has been tested on the IEEE-300, 9241-bus and a real 35,000-bus power system in China. Some comparisons with other algorithms have been performed. Numerical results reveal that a lower number of the Jacobian matrix factorisations are needed with the proposed method, which significantly reduces the computational costs.