Power Flow Solution of

Unbalanced Three-
Phase Lines
Presented by: Sicat Rene D.
Power Flow/Load Flow
• To compute for the line currents, line losses, load
flow is performed.
• Load flow or power flow is a problem of finding
the operating point of a distribution network at
steady state or under normal conditions at any
given load and cogeneration (if any).
• Load flow involves finding all bus voltages, line
currents, line flows and line losses and other
steady state quantity.
A. Three-Phase Backward/Forward
Sweep Power Flow method
- The BFS power flow method is based on the
direct application of Kirchhoff’s Law (KVL) and
KCL).
Radial System Network
• Line sections in the radial network are ordered
by layers away from the root node (substation
bus).
 Figure 1
Branch l of distribution network connected to
M sub-laterals
 Three-Phase Backward/Forward
Sweep Power Flow method
Steps:

Nodal
Backward Forward Convergence
Current
Sweep Sweep Criterion
Calculation
1. Nodal Current Calculation
• This is an initial step for the backward/forward
algorithm.
• In this step, load currents are initially
calculated by assuming initial voltages for all
nodes to be equal to the root node voltage.
At iteration k:

Where:
Iia, Iib, Iic Current injections at node i
Sia, Sib, Sic Scheduled power injections at node i
Via, Vib, Vic phase voltages at node i
Yia, Yib, Yic Admittances of all shunt elements at
node i
2. Backward Sweep (KCL)
• This is step aims to update the currents and
powers towards the root node.
• The step is based on the fact that the current
is known at the lateral of the feeder, and
hence the total current at the source node can
be calculated through the backward sweep
which aims to sum up line section current
starting from last layer towards and moving
towards first layer.
Backward Sweep

Where:
Jla, Jlb, Jlc are the current flows on line section l
l and M is the set of line sections connected to node j.

Example of Backward Sweep

3. Forward Sweep(KVL)
• The forward step is also called the voltage
update step. This step is based on the fact that
the voltage at the source node is known.
• Hence, starting from the first layer and moving
towards the last layer, the currents at the
sending end of line segment and then the
voltages at its receiving end are calculated.
• The source node voltage is set as 1.0 per unit
and other node voltages are calculated.
Forward Sweep

where:
Zaa,l, Zab,l, Zac,l are line impedances at node ij

Example of Forward Sweep

4. Convergence Criterion
 After the three steps are executed in one iteration,
the power mismatches at each node for all phases
are calculated:

Note:
If the real or imaginary part (real or reactive power) of
any of these power mismatches is greater than a
convergence criterion, steps 1, 2 and 3 are repeated
until convergence is achieved.
 B. Three-Phase Power Flow Using
Current Injection Method
• The current injection equations are written in
rectangular coordinates and the order 2n bus
admittance matrix is composed of 2x2 blocks.
• A new dependent variable (∆𝑄 ) is introduced for
each PV bus, together with an additional equation
imposing the condition of zero bus voltage deviation.
• Except for PV buses, the Jacobian matrix has the
elements of the off-diagonal blocks equal to those of
the nodal admittance matrix.
Three-Phase Power Flow Using Current
Injection Method
• The elements of the diagonal blocks are
updated at every iteration, according with the
load model being considered for that bus.
• This method was tested on large scale systems
and has achieved an average 30% speedup,
when test benched against a state of the art
production grade Newton Raphson power
flow.
References:
• “Efficient Three-Phase Power-Flow Method for
Unbalanced Radial Distribution Systems” by
Karar Mahmoud and Mamdouh Abdel-Akher
(pdf)
• Engr. Bryan Navarro presentation on “Power
System Loss Minimization And Load Balancing”
• Jeric Del Rosario’s report
• “Three-Phase Power Flow Calculation Using
Current Injection Method” by Paulo A. N.
Garcia
Thank you