Enhancements and New Features in Simulator 14

New Add-ons

• Topology Processing
• Transient Stability (as beta)

User Interface

• Added ability to make a specific window Free-Floating or In the Container Window. Most dialogs default as in the Container Window, but the message log defaults as Free-Floating on Top. See the Window Basics help for changing the window style.
• As various dialogs are opened, PowerWorld will keep track of the Free-Floating/Contained style as well as the position and size of each dialog. When that dialog is then opened again it will open to the same style, size, and position as it was previously. These settings are stored in the Windows registry so that they are remembered when the program is opened again. See the Window Basics help for more information.
• When solving the power flow, Red, Purple, Green, and Blue outlines have been added around Message Log text to signify which part of the power flow solution the message text is originating from (see information in Solving the Power Flow regarding the Power Flow, Controller, and MW Control loops).
• In the Message Log, message text which originates from the PV, QV, OPF, or SCOPF calculations will be highlighted in yellow. Log messages which originate from contingency analysis events are highlighted in light blue. For difficult solutions, this highlighting helps determine which part of the solution is having trouble.

Advanced Filtering

• The Case Information Toolbar: Filtering Menu Filter List drop-down menu has been modified to place the list of filters in a submenu if there are more than 10 filters. Additionally an active advanced filter is denoted with a check mark and the object type of that advanced filter is denoted with a gray check mark.
• Added support on the list of Advanced Filters display for deleting and inserting advanced filters directly from the Advanced Filters Case Information display.
• Added Advanced Filtering by Device. Device Filtering allows you to directly use one of the power system model objects as a filter. The relationship between the object type being listed and the object type of the device filter determines how filtering is done.
• Added the Case Information Filter bar that provides much more direct access to the advanced and device filtering abilities.

Auxiliary Files and Display Auxiliary Files

• Added an optional parameter in the header of a DATA section that specifies whether to create a new object if an existing one is not found. If omitted the default behavior of prompting the user will continue. If the value is YES, objects will be created, if the value is NO, objects will not be created.
• When saving out the limit monitoring settings, previously no information regarding specific voltage limits for specific buses was stored. This is now automatically added to the Limit Monitoring Auxiliary file when saved (this includes on the Limit Monitoring dialog as well as from the Contingency analysis, ATC, PV, QV, etc... AUX files.
• On the Auxiliary File Export Format Description dialog, a button has been added to Create Format for Complete Case. This automatically creates a format description that is similar to that used by Simulator when choosing to Save Case, As Auxiliary File.

Auxiliary File SCRIPT and SimAuto

• Previously, when starting a SimAuto process, an existing Simulator instance would be taken over by the SimAuto process. This has been changed so that existing Simulator instances are left open and a new Simulator process is started by SimAuto.
• New and modified script commands
  • Added a new script command CloseOneline("filename")
  • Added a new script command when running SimAuto called LoadAXD("AXDfilename", "onelinefilename", CreateIfNotFound)
  • Added a new script command CalculateLODFMatrix(WhichOnes, filterProcess, filterMonitor, MonitorOnlyClosed, LinearMethod)
  • Added a new script command SaveObjectFields("filename", objecttype, [fieldlist])
  • Added a new script command ChangeSystemMVABase(NewBase)
  • Added a new script command SaveOneline("filename", "oneline", savefiletype)

Available Transfer Capability (ATC) Enhancements

• Added optional parameter AppendFile to ATCWriteResultsAndOptions. YES means results will be appended to an existing file. NO means existing file will be overwritten. Default is YES if not specified to retain previous functionality.
• When running iterated ATC methods, ramping transfer, or moving to one of the multiple scenarios, the minimum voltages for reducing load are set to 0.
• Added the ability to interact using Auxiliary files and SimAuto with the ATC Scenario Transfer Limitations by using the objecttype "TransferLimit". This is done by using fields ATCLineZoneChanges, ATCGenChanges, and ATCInterfaceChanges as integer identifier to specify the ATC Scenario the transfer limitations corresponds to.
• Added a new tab for multiple ATC Scenario results called "Combined Results". This shows a single case information display showing transfer limitations under ALL scenarios. Default columns for the fields ATCLineZoneChanges, ATCGenChanges, and ATCInterfaceChanges are included.
• Added script command ATCWriteToText(“filename”,filetype) where filetype can be TAB or CSV. If omitted, TAB is assumed. TAB will create a tab delimited file while CSV will create a comma delimited file. This script command is only used when writing the results from multiple ATC scenarios. The filename will be appended with the identifier for interface scenarios. If there are multiple interface scenarios, multiple files will be created.

Case Information Displays

• Added new User-Defined Case Information displays which can be added to the Model Explorer
• Added new Fields Pane to the Model and Display Explorer giving direct access to the columns available for each case information display. You may left-click and drag fields onto the case information display to add fields.
• Modified Case Information Displays so that holding down the CTRL key and then dragging a column heading allows you to move column order.
• Added new case information displays to the Model Explorer to show Fault Analysis related information.
• Started work on enhancing the plot columns feature. It now allows specification of color, line type, etc... for each column.
• Added an explanation to the caption of the Paste button on the case information local menu if the Paste button is disabled. The button may say "key fields missing" or "object type invalid" if the first two lines of the clipboard are incorrect.

Contingency Analysis Enhancements

• Added a post-contingency auxiliary file specific for particular contingency. If this auxiliary is specified then the contingency option post-contingency auxiliary file will not be loaded.
• Previously the auto-insertion of contingencies routine did not allow the auto-insertion of Generator or Bus outages at the slack bus. Simulator actually handles this outage fine, so the restriction of the auto-insertion has been removed. 
• Added the ability to define Monitoring Exceptions, special inclusion and exclusion monitoring lists of elements with each contingency. This allows you to NOT monitor specific elements, or to monitor only a specific list of elements.
• Optimized the calculations done for Linearized Contingency Analysis to speed them up substantially. Linearized contingency analysis should now run approximately 3 times faster.
• When using make-up power in the contingency analysis tool, the generation make-up loop was using a very low tolerance (4 times the mismatch solution tolerance). This was causing solution times to be much slower than desirable. We changed the default tolerance to be 5 MW, which for typical single-line outages results in a contingency solution speed between 2 and 3 times faster. The user may also adjust this tolerance in the Contingency Modeling Options.
• Added ability to apply an Advanced Filter to filter contingency records by Branch, Generator, Load, Switched Shunt, Interface, Injection Group or DC Line. A Contingency record will meet the filter if it contains any of these objects in its element actions that meet their filter.
• Added several messages to contingency solution to notify of generator record changes in the post-contingency solution regarding the Advanced Modeling Options of Line Drop Compensation, Maximum MW Response, AGC, and Participation Factor.
• Added the ability to properly monitor interfaces in both directions in the contingency analysis tool.
• Added more options for saving a list of contingencies as an auxiliary file. Previously the normal Save As Aux methods were overridden to save a hard-coded list of fields as well as many other related objects. The normal Save As Aux choices now behave the same as other case information displays, while two new buttons have been added that save the more complete hard-coded set of objects and fields.
• Added options to write out PTI CON files using bus name/kvs instead of bus numbers as well as ability to specify whether to truncate names to 8 or 12 characters.
• Enhanced the linearized lossless contingency solution method and the DC approximation contingency solution method to handle all situations when islanding occurs as a result of the contingency.

Data Objects

• Added many new fields that show a count of the number of generators, loads, branches, etc... that are contained by Areas, Zones, or Substations.
• Added extra columns to MW Transactions to allow the import/export bid to be specified directly there.
• Modified so that as three-winding transformer impedances and tap ratios remain synchronized with their two-winding transformer equivalents as values are changed.

Dialogs

• Modified the Find Dialog behavior when pasting in text so that it will now search to go to the nearest match when the search parameter is pasted.
• Added the ability on the Power Flow Solution: General Options to change the system MVA Base. This will then update all the internal structures to store the proper values on the new base.

Difference Flows

• When using the Difference Case in Difference Flows, support was added for showing the difference of status fields so that you can see which branches or generators have changed status between cases. Fields will show up as either OPEN/CLOSED or CLOSED/OPEN if the status changed. The status in the present case will be listed first.
• Added option regarding whether to use Bus Numbers of Bus Name_NomKV when saving auxiliary files from the topological differences dialog.
• Difference Flows is now available in both Edit Mode and Run Mode.

Equivalencing

• Added new option Adjust Area Unspecified Interchanges to Zero Out ACE.

Fault Analysis

• Simulator defaults all zero-sequence parameters for transmission line to be equal to 2.5 times the positive sequence impedances. Simulator continued this behavior when reading in PTI Sequence files, but it appears that PTI assumes that lines are open in the zero-sequence model if no zero-sequence data is specified in the *.seq data file. When reading *.seq Simulator now gives the user the ability to assume this behavior.

File Formats

• PowerWorld Binary File (PWB) version 14
• PowerWorld Auxiliary File (AUX) support
  • When choosing to Save a Case, added new filetypes for saving as AUX using secondary keys or labels.
• GE EPC file support
  • When reading GE EPC files, modified it to read multi-section line interface elements directly instead of assigning the element to the first or last section of the multi-section line.
  • When reading an entire case from a GE EPC file, if loads are encountered that have the same ID except that the alphabetical case is different, a unique ID will be assigned to the current load instead of only keeping the first load encountered in the file.
  • Added more error handling when reading EPC files to handle situations were AC branch, generator, load, or switched shunt ids were duplicated at a single bug. It appears that the EPC file permits duplicate IDs if their upper/lower case is different. That EPC format also treats the circuit IDs " 1" the as different than "1 " (i.e. it treats the spaces as different IDs). Simulator now handles this but also creates new unique IDs as appropriate. Messages are written to the log.
  • After reading an EPC file, Simulator will now go through and turn off control for all transformers that are more than 1/2 step size out of their Max/Min tap range.
  • Previously when reading from an EPC file Simulator would skip all records that did not contain ALL expect fields. It has now been modified to just skip the missing fields but still properly read the file.

Bus View Oneline

• Modified to show radial connections to a bus or load above the Main Bus.
• Modified color scheme of bus links so that they are a mixture of the background color and the bus color. The old "bus link color" is no longer used.
• When customizing the bus view, modified to allow the user to define the field prefixes also.

Oneline Diagrams

• Added Line Navigation Arrows to provide an easy way to pan/zoom to the other end of a transmission line or interface object.
• The contouring algorithm has been completely rewritten to utilize advances in computer graphics cards. Contouring will now be more than 10 times faster than previous versions.
• Contouring is now available while in either Edit Mode or Run Mode.
• Added a three-winding transformer symbol
• On the PTDF dialog, When clicking the button to "Visualize PTDFs", the pie chart oneline options are now changed to show PTDFs also. Previously only the flow arrows were changed.
• When inserting a bus graphically on a oneline diagram, modifications were made to provide better feedback on the Bus dialog as to whether or not a new bus is being added to the power system model.
• When drawing onelines with substation objects instead of bus objects as the primary object, added better support for automatically anchoring generator, load and switched shunt objects to the substation.
• Greatly increased the speed of refreshing anchors on the oneline diagram.
• Added Pre-Defined Selections to the Auto-Insert Borders dialog that provide quick selections for North America, USA State Borders, Canadian Provinces, or Entire World.
• Modified the oneline links so that they can also open Display Auxiliary Files (AXD).
• Added option on the Draw Tab to choose Auto Insert > Reset Stub Locations... which will completely redo the positioning of objects anchored to buses and substations in the manner done when auto-inserting lines, gens, load, and shunts.
• Added ability on the Edit Mode Substation Information Dialog to apply the latitude/longitude of the substation oneline display object to the substation data record.
• Changed the circuit breaker objects to allow them to be dynamically formatted using colors.
• Added support for generator rotors spinning counter-clockwise by enter a negative number in angle change per refresh.
• Added the ability to contour multi-section line objects. When contouring line objects, the contour image for a multi-section line will reflect the series of AC lines it represents. When contouring bus objects, locations of intermediate buses will be contoured.
• Changed printing so that the user can pick a particular DPI output to a printer. This allows onelines to be printed at printer resolution, not only screen resolution.
• Added three new circuit breaker symbols for Earthing Switch, Pole Top Switch, and Auto Pole Top Switch.

Optimal Power Flow Enhancements

• On the Price Details case information display, modified so that the column headings regarding contingency violations include the name of the contingency also.
• Added support for doing Difference Flows comparisons of the OPF Reserve results.

Power Flow Solution

• Improved solution performance for the situation where line X has just been CLOSED while at the same time Line Y has just been OPENED, if Line X and Line Y are in series with one another. Previously, angle smoothing was performed on the CLOSED line X in this situation which worked very poorly. This is now handled using a more appropriate voltage and angle estimation.
• Added restrictions to phase-shifter transformer movement in the Control Loop of the power flow solution to restrict larger phase changes across a very small impedance phase-shifter. This helps with power flow convergence.
• When dynamically assigning new slack buses, Simulator chooses the bus that has the largest maximum generator MW output. This has been changed so that buses with a maximum generator MW output larger than 5000 are ignored because these likely represent generators with fictitious MW limits such as 9999.
• Added special Wind Control Mode options for generators which effect how the Mvar limits are handled.

PV and QV Curve Enhancements

• Added Reverse Transfer Option.
• Completely rewrote the PV stepping algorithm to avoid unnecessary power flow solutions.
• Modified Quantities to Track to allow the inclusion of ATC Extra Monitors in the tracking.
• Removed the "Study Name" from the Auxiliary format SCRIPT and DATA sections. This is not needed anymore.
• Added support for Custom Expressions in the QV results case information display.
• Added the ability to specify merit order dispatch separately for the source and sink. This now allows you to use merit order for one and NOT the other.
• When ramping in the PV curve tool, added the ability to specify ZIP components for Q (MVAR) load.
• When ramping in the PV curve tool, added the ability to scale load in proportion to existing ZIP ratios.
• Added support for advanced filtering on the PV plot form when selecting a list of objects.

Sensitivity Calculations

• Added a list of Injection Groups to the TLR/GSF dialog.
• Added support for extracting the multiple element TLR sensitivity columns through SimAuto and through script commands
• Added a new tab for showing multi-element injection group sensitivities on the TLR/GSF dialog. The values show will be calculated from the bus values with weightings determined by the injection group participation factors.
• Added a new tab for showing Load sensitivities on the TLR/GSF dialogs. Sensitivities displayed represent the sensitivity of the loads terminal bus.

Time Step Simulation Enhancements

• Added Auxiliary File Support for Schedule Subscriptions.
• Added support for Time Step Simulation schedule subscriptions from DC Line fields.
• Added support for saving schedule subscriptions to aux files, including fields from generators bid points.
• Modified the TSB file format to save the start and end time points of a simulation.