Power Systems Transient Stability - A Grand Computing Challenge

Real-time or faster-than-real-time power system transient stability simulations will have signi cant impact on the future design and operations of both individual electrical utility companies and large interconnected power systems. Su ciently fast transient stability simulation implementations may signi cantly improve power system reliability which, in turn, will positively a ect electrical utility company pro ts, environmental impact, and customer satisfaction. Past research into techniques to enhance the performance of transient stability simulations has included both concurrent processing and better algorithms, however, there are still considerable areas for research into this problem. The scope of real-time or faster-than-real-time transient stability analysis places this application in the category of being a grand computing challenge that could bene t from future tera op (trillion oating-point operations per second) supercomputers. This paper describes various research areas that are of interest to the computational science academic community that o er promise to improve the quality and performance of power system transient stability simulations. Many of the research areas o er competitive alternatives for performance improvements; consequently, a parallel transient stability testbed at the Northeast Parallel Architectures Center (NPAC) at Syracuse University is proposed. We believe that it is possible to develop scalable transient stability algorithms using both concurrent computers and more e cient algorithms that could o er speedups of 100 on 32-processor distributed-memory multicomputers when compared to sequential codes such as the EPRI-Extended Transient/Mid-Term Stability Program. Even greater speedups would be possible on multicomputers with more processors.