A novel linearized power flow approach for transmission and distribution networks

Power flow computations are important for operation and planning of the electricity grid, but are computationally expensive because of nonlinearities and the size of the system of equations. Linearized methods reduce computational time but often have the disadvantage that they are not applicable to general grids. In this paper we propose a novel linearized power flow (LPF) technique that is able to handle PQ- and PV-buses, and works on both transmission and distribution networks. This technique is based on previous work on handling PQ-buses by connecting them to artificial-additional ground buses. We extend this idea to PV-buses. Test-cases show that the novel LPF method leads to similar accuracy as nonlinear power flow (NPF) methods while significantly reducing computation time. Therefore, the general LPF methods is a good alternative to NPF methods.