A Study of System Splitting Strategies for Island Operation of Power System: A Two-Phase Method Based on OBDDs

System splitting problem, also known as controlled system separation problem, is to determine the proper splitting points for splitting the entire power network into islands when island operation of system is unavoidable. By “proper” we mean that the splitting strategies should guarantee both the power balance and satisfaction to capacity constraints of transmission lines and other facilities in each island. The system splitting problem is very hard because the strategy space is huge for even middle-scale power networks. This paper proposes a two-phase method to search for proper splitting strategies in real-time. The method narrows down the strategy space using highly efficient OBDD-based algorithm in the first phase, then finds proper splitting strategies using power-flow analysis in the reduced strategy space in the second phase. Simulation with symbolic model checking tool SMV indicates that this method is very promising.