An improved block-parallel Newton method via epsilon decompositions for load-flow calculations

The objective of this paper is to present a new method for parallel load-flow calculations based on an effective decomposition of the network. In the solution process we utilize the block-parallel Newton method developed in [1], which involves only diagonal blocks of the Jacobian. The underlying structure is obtained by applying the epsilon decomposition algorithm [2,3], which eliminates weak coupling elements from the matrix. We demonstrate that the iterative process can be significantly accelerated by making certain modifications in mismatch evaluation for buses connecting different blocks. Experiments on the hypercube confirm that the proposed method is indeed effective, particularly for problems where a good initial approximation is available (such as outage assessment).