An Interactive Power System Analyzer with Graphics Display for Educational Use

The paper presents a student-oriented power-system analyzer with an interactive graphics display. Its capabilities include studies of (1) load flow, (2) load and generation, (3) voltage level control, (4) economic dispatch, and (5) contingency and planning analysis. Power network configurations of up to 30 buses can be presented clearly on one screen. The interactive nature of this program makes such studies effective and easy to use. With the support of a computer with graphics software and many graphics terminals, this program can be a useful teaching tool for power system studies. The object of this work is to produce a computer/graphics facility for power-system studies that the junior and senior students can use. The computer available for student use is the IBM 4381, which is linked with an interactive graphics system. The Tektronix 4014 display terminal is a CRT storage display device with an enhanced resolution of 4096* 3120. This system is supported by many software packages including TCS, which has been chosen for this study. The power-system analyzer is designed to include the following features: 1. Interactivity The most common outstanding feature of this analyzer is that it is interactive. The potential saving in time by achieving the solution within a few seconds rather than a few hours or days is important. 2. Easy graphics display Two kinds of graphics displays are used. For a small system, an automatic display mode is available. No graphics data are needed.