• KEPCO Journal on Electric Power and Energy
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• v.8 no.2
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• pp.159-179
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• 2022

Often a network becomes complex, and multiple entities would get in charge of managing part of the whole network. An example is a utility grid. While the entire grid would go under a single utility company's responsibility, the network is often split into multiple subsections. Subsequently, each subsection would be given as the responsibility area to the corresponding sub-organization in the utility company. The issue of how to make subsystems of adequate size and minimum number of interconnections between subsystems becomes more critical, especially in real-time simulations. Because the computation capability limit of a single computation unit, regardless of whether it is a high-speed conventional CPU core or an FPGA computational engine, it comes with a maximum limit that can be completed within a given amount of execution time. The issue becomes worsened in real time simulation, in which the computation needs to be in precise synchronization with the real-world clock. When the subject of the computation allows for a longer execution time, i.e., a larger time step size, a larger portion of the network can be put on a computation unit. This translates into a larger margin of the difference between the worst and the best. In other words, even though the worst (or the largest) computational burden is orders of magnitude larger than the best (or the smallest) computational burden, all the necessary computation can still be completed within the given amount of time. However, the requirement of real-time makes the margin much smaller. In other words, the difference between the worst and the best should be as small as possible in order to ensure the even distribution of the computational load. Besides, data exchange/communication is essential in parallel computation, affecting the overall performance. However, the exchange of data takes time. Therefore, the corresponding consideration needs to be with the computational load distribution among multiple calculation units. If it turns out in a satisfactory way, such distribution will raise the possibility of completing the necessary computation in a given amount of time, which might come down in the level of microsecond order. This paper presents an effective way to split a given electrical network, according to multiple criteria, for the purpose of distributing the entire computational load into a set of even (or close to even) sized computational loads. Based on the proposed system splitting method, heavy computation burdens of large-scale electrical networks can be distributed to multiple calculation units, such as an RTDS real time simulator, achieving either more efficient usage of the calculation units, a reduction of the necessary size of the simulation time step, or both.