Resilient Adaptive Parallel sImulator for griD (RAPID): An Open Source Power System Simulation Toolbox

Abstract

This paper describes an open source power system simulation toolbox: Resilient Adaptive Parallel sImulator for griD (RAPID), a package of Python codes that implements an advanced power system dynamic simulation framework. The main function of RAPID is time-domain simulation, and it contains details of the solution process, including the quasi-steady-state power flow analysis, to solve nonlinear differential algebraic equations describing the detailed representation of network and transient stability models of dynamic devices in a computationally efficient manner. In particular, RAPID utilizes and incorporates emerging solution techniques; a novel “parallel-in-time” (Parareal) algorithm, adaptive model reduction, and semi-analytical solution methods as well as the standard numerical solution methods. Moreover, the whole simulation process for the transmission network has been coupled with OpenDSS, a widely used open-source distribution system simulator, to enable the co-simulation of integrated transmission and distribution systems. Basic structure and features of RAPID are presented to provide an easy-to-understand guideline for the usage of the tool and illustrate its unique capabilities. This paper also presents simulation results for a number of test scenarios and demonstrates RAPID’s values for advancing power systems research in dynamic modeling and simulation techniques toward researchers as well as educators and students.

Keywords

• High-performance computing
• open-source tools
• parallel algorithm
• power engineering research
• power systems
• power system co-simulation