A student friendly toolbox for power system analysis using MATLAB

There are various premier software packages available in the market, either for free use or found at a high price, to analyse the century old electrical power system. Universities in the developed countries expend thousands of dollars per year to bring these commercial applications to the desktops of students, teachers and researchers. For teachers and researchers this is regarded as a good long-term investment. As well, for the postgraduate students these packages are very important to validate the model developed during course of study. For simulating different test cases and/or standard systems, which are readily available with these widely used commercial software packages, such enriched software plays an important role. But in case of underdeveloped and developing countries the high amount of money needed to be expended per year to purchase commercial software is a farfetched idea. In addition, undergraduate students who are learning power system for the very first time find these packages incongruous for them since they are not familiar with the detailed input required to run the program. Even if it is a simple load flow program to find the steady-state behaviour of the system, or an elementary symmetrical fault analysis test case these packages require numerous inputs since they mimic a practical power system rather than considering simple test cases. In effect, undergraduate students tend to stay away from these packages. So rather than aiding the study in power system, these create a bad impression on students‘ mind about the very much interesting course.