Dietmar Winkler
University College of Southeast Norway
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http://dx.doi.org/10.3384/ecp17138263Published in: Proceedings of the 58th Conference on Simulation and Modelling (SIMS 58) Reykjavik, Iceland, September 25th – 27th, 2017
Linköping Electronic Conference Proceedings 138:35, p. 263-270
Published: 2017-09-27
ISBN: 978-91-7685-417-4
ISSN: 1650-3686 (print), 1650-3740 (online)
The past modelling of electrical powers systems used to
be a the domain of a few major power system modelling
tools.
Commercial tools1 like DIgSILENT PowerFactory [3],
POWERSYS EMTP-RV [17], PSCADTM [14], Siemens
PSS/E R ? [20] are just some examples. All of them very
powerful but with their own proprietary format for the
models created makes it hard to exchange validated mod-
els of power systems.
In order to disconnect the dependency of the power sys-
tem model from the power system tool a project funded
by the European Commission was started called “iTesla
– Innovative Tools for Electrical System Security within
Large Areas” [7]. One of the results of the project was
the creation of a open-source modelling library called
iPSL [24].
The library was created using the open-source Modelica
modelling language which in turn allows to be used with
several different Modelica modelling tools. The strong
focus during the project was the validation of the mod-
els contained in the library. Most components stem from
other tools (e.g., PSAT [15], PSS/E R ? [20]).
But the iPSL is by far not the first open-source power
system library written in Modelica. Other libraries
which have been around before are: SPOT [1],
ObjectStab [11] and PowerSystems [6] (an updated
subset of SPOT). In addition the iPSL library has been
“forked” as OpenIPSL [21] by SmartTS Lab which is one
partners of the original “iTesla” project.
This paper is going to investigate the differences of
the different available power system libraries. Point out
their specific strength and weaknesses with respect to user-
friendliness, robustness, physical representation and vali-
dation.
electrical power systems, modelling, simula-
tion, modelica, open-source, libraries