An Effective Approach for Distribution System Power Flow Solution

An effective approach for unbalanced three-phase distribution power flow solutions is proposed in this paper. The special topological characteristics of distribution networks have been fully utilized to make the direct solution possible. Two matrices—the bus-injection to branch-current matrix and the branch-current to busvoltage matrix— and a simple matrix multiplication are used to obtain power flow solutions. Due to the distinctive solution techniques of the proposed method, the time-consuming LU decomposition and forward/backward substitution of the Jacobian matrix or admittance matrix required in the traditional power flow methods are no longer necessary. Therefore, the proposed method is robust and time-efficient. Test results demonstrate the validity of the proposed method. The proposed method shows great potential to be used in distribution automation applications. Keywords—Distribution power flow, distribution automation system, radial network, unbalanced networks.