Executing EMT Simulations in Parallel on Cluster Machines using PSCAD

Electromagnetic transient (EMT) simulations are fundamental to modern power network analysis, especially with the growing number of inverter-based resource (IBR) interconnections. EMT studies for networks with high IBR penetration and low short-circuit ratio (SCR) require detailed models to ensure power system transient stability. This requires a high computing demand with multiple simulation processing due to the complexity of solving Differential-Algebraic System of Equations (DAE). Running the simulations with a High-Performance Computing framework could reduce execution time and significantly improve computational efficiency. This paper proposes a simple, industry-friendly framework created by the consulting company GERS for EMT simulations, based on a prior task queue implementation for Python. The proposed task distributor was tested on the IEEE 39 bus system for 9 simulations across a varying number of parallel processes. The EMT simulation time decreased from 21.49 min to 9.43 min by deploying only 3 cores.