A Hybrid Decoupled Power Flow Method for Balanced Power Distribution Systems

This paper proposes a hybrid decoupled power flow method for balanced power distribution systems with distributed generation sources. The method formulates the power flow equations in active power and reactive power decoupled form with polar coordinates. Second-order terms are included in the active power mismatch iteration, and constant Jacobian and Hessian matrices are used. A hybrid direct and indirect solution technique is used to achieve efficiency and robustness of the algorithm. Active power correction is solved by means of a sparse lower triangular and upper triangular (LU) decomposition algorithm with partial pivoting, and the reactive power correction is solved by means of restarted generalized minimal residual algorithm with an incomplete LU pre-conditioner. Typical distribution generation models and distribution load models are included. The impact of zero-impedance branches is explicitly modeled through reconfiguring of the adjacent branches with impedances. Numerical examples on a sample distribution system with widespread photovoltaic installations are given to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method.