Abstract:

Nowadays, different commercial and open-source power system solutions are currently available to solve power flow and optimal power flow problems for educational and professional purposes. Examples of commercial packages are DIgSILENT PowerFactory, PowerWorld, SIMPOW and NEPLAN. Non-commercial solutions include MATPOWER, pandapower and PyPSA. With the massive integration of renewable energy sources (RES) into power systems, mainly wind and PV installations at distribution level, voltage regulation in such distribution systems is frequently suggested by means of coordinated On Load Tap Changers (OLTC) transformers and reactive power compensation strategies. However, OLTC are not usually developed for open-source packages. Due to the expensive cost of software's licenses, open-source solutions are considered as the best option for education, giving the students the possibility to carry out different analysis and simulations at home. By these means, this paper compares two different tools (one commercial (DIgSILENT PowerFactory) and one open-source (pandapower)) focused on power flow at distribution level with high RES integration. An OLTC transformer model has been developed for pandapower, comparing and evaluating the results with those provided by DIgSILENT PowerFactory. All scenarios are simulated following the same grid topology, increasing the RES integration in line with current RES integration road-maps. Results show similar values with both software packages. According to this analysis, the use of pandapower is considered as suitable for engineering subjects related to power systems analysis and stability.

Keywords:

Power flow, OLTC, RES, Simulation, Engineering.