Roseau Load Flow: a modern software package for the modelling and steady-state simulation of power distribution grids

Abstract

The concept of modelling and simulation of electricity grids, in particular for power flow and short-circuit analysis, has been around for decades. Numerous numerical methods and software tools thus have already been developed for that purpose. Nonetheless, it is still the subject of active research, driven by new needs of power grid operators and by advances in the fields of applied mathematics and software engineering. This paper introduces the result of such recent research, namely:Roseau Load Flow, a new tool for power distribution grid simulation that is especially suitable for the analysis of low- and medium-voltage grids. We describe its specific features and main design choices, highlighting howRoseau Load Flowdifferentiates from existing solvers and improves over the state-of-the-art in the area of modelling and simulation of power distribution grids. Then, we demonstrate its capabilities by evaluating the hosting capacity of a real low-voltage grid for distributed generators equipped with Volt-VAr and Volt-Watt regulations.