Drawing Meshed One-Line Diagrams of Electric Power Systems using a Modified Controlled Spring Embedder Algorithm Enhanced with Geospatial Data

Abstract

Problem statement: One-line diagrams are widely used in electrical power systems to provide a graphical view of state of the system and to assess its performance. Several methodologies and algorithms have been proposed to automatically draw the power system’s one-line diagram and provide satisfactory results for radial or small-size meshed networks. Nevertheless, actual power systems models are generally associated to strongly meshed networks and in this case, the usage of the mentioned methodologies can yield unsatisfactory solutions, with a great number of line crossings. Approach: This study proposes a method that generates bus/branch one-line diagrams of meshed power systems, based on a modified version of the Controlled Spring Embedder algorithm enhanced by the usage of physical laws and geospatial data. Results: The methodology was tested using a portion of the Brazilian interconnected power system that corresponds to a meshed bus/branch model with 58 nodes and 64 branches. The graphical portrayal was obtained from the branches list of the network, firstly without the presence of geographical information and then considering it. Conclusion: The proposed algorithm was able to evolve a graphical portrayal of the bus/branch electric model of a power system, yielding satisfactory results. In special, geospatial data have proved to be fundamental information, allowing the elimination of branch crossings and providing consistent representations for a specific electrical network in 95% of the simulated cases.