Power systems dynamics simulation using object-oriented programming

Object-oriented programming is an alternative to overcome the problems asso ciated with the development, maintenance and update of large software by el ectrical utilities. However many applications in the electrical industry de pend critically on the computational efficiency of the implementation. This paper applies the object-oriented approach to the problem of power system dynamics simulation. A decomposition of the electric power system into clas ses, suitable to include all elements required in this problem, is presente d. A structure for linear systems solution aiming computational efficiency for large-scale systems applications, is proposed. Tests using four equival ents of the South-Southeastern Brazilian interconnected power system are ca rried out. The performance of the object-oriented program, developed in C+, is assessed in several computers. Real-time simulation was achieved for m edium-sized power systems in lower cost high performance computers. The imp lementation is compared with an industry program written in Fortran and sim ilar performances are achieved.