A Comparative Analysis of Numerical Iterative Methods for Power Flow Using IEEE 5-Bus Test System

An Efficient power flow techniques plays an important role for planning and operation of power system. The power flow delineates the generation scheduling, line losses, bus voltage and angle for economical operation of system. The power flow methods can be classified based on numerical computation or holomorphic embedded based using digital computers. The Gauss Sediel, Newton Rapshon and Fast decoupled power flow, are the popularly used techniques based on numeric computation. This work performed a comparative power flow analysis using Gauss Sediel (G-S) and Newton Rapshon (N-R) methods. The convergence characteristics, accuracy, number of iteration, computational time, and tolerance limits are the basis of comparative study performed. The MATLAB simulation environment is used to carry out the analysis using IEEE 5-bus test system. The results articulate that the GS adheres the linear convergence while the N-R manifests the quadratic. The convergence is highly sensitive towards the selection of slack bus in G-S method, which is minimal for N-R. Thus, the G-S is user-friendly and reliable for small power system application. However, the NR shows the more accurate and definitive convergence characteristics, thus suited for power flow studies in large system.