Power Flow Convergence and Reactive Power Planning in the Creation of Large Synthetic Grids

To encourage and support innovation, synthetic electric grids are fictional, designed systems that mimic the complexity of actual electric grids but contain no confidential information. Synthetic grid design is driven by the requirement to match wide variety of metrics derived from statistics of actual grids. In order to scale these systems to 10,000 buses or more, robust reactive power planning is needed, accounting for power flow convergence issues. This paper addresses reactive power planning and power flow convergence in the context of large synthetic power grids. The iterative algorithm presented by this paper supplements a synthetic transmission network that has been validated by a dc power flow with a realistic set of voltage control devices to meet a specified voltage profile, even with the constraints of difficult power flow convergence for large systems. The algorithm is illustrated with an example new synthetic 10,000 bus system, geographically situated in the western United States, which is publicly available and useful for a variety of research studies. An analysis is shown validating the synthetic system with actual grid characteristics.