An effective topological and primitive impedance based distribution load flow method for radial distribution systems

Abstract

In this paper, an effective topological primitive impedance and distribution power flow algorithm is developed. This method fully exploits the radial structure of the network and solves the distribution load flow directly. An effective data structure is proposed to identify all those lines that are incident to the path between the feeding bus and any selected bus. Using this concept and primitive impedances of the lines, only diagonal elements of the distribution load flow (DLF) matrix are computed and stored in single dimension vectors to obtain the distribution load flow solution. Unlike other traditional methods, the proposed approach does not require any LU decomposition or bus admittance matrix. It is robust, time-efficient and needs very less memory for any size of the distribution system. The proposed method is tested on standard IEEE 15,31,34,69 and 85 bus radial distribution systems and results are promising and has great potential application in the distribution automation.