Bus View Display

 

The Bus View Display feature provides a graphical display which allows you to quickly browse information about a bus and everything connect to that bus. The bus view displays enable convenient bus-by-bus navigation through the power system. From the bus view, you can find out a bus’ voltage and angle, the load, shunt compensation, and generation connected to the bus, and the flows on all lines emanating from the bus. You can also discover the bus’ area and zone affiliations, as well as the bus’ marginal cost. Moreover you can find out all information about the elements associated with the bus by directly invoking their associated information dialogs. The advantage of the bus view displays, is that they are auto-created oneline diagrams.

Along the top of the bus view display resides a panel of controls. The buttons labeled Back and Aheadallow you to step through the history of buses you have viewed thus far. To move the bus view to a particular bus, type a number or name into the edit box next to the caption Bus. If a number is typed the case will be scanned for a bus of that number, otherwise the case will be scanned for a bus that starts with the string entered. If you’re unsure which bus that you are looking for click the Find… button to bring up a display that allows you to search using wildcard strings for the bus. The History menu will show a list of the last 30 buses which have been visited in a bus view. There are also drop-downs in this top panel for Options and Views . These are discussed below.

Below this top panel sits the actual bus display. The bus you have chosen to inspect, which we shall refer to as the target bus, is represented by a long, thick horizontal line. Notice that the bus’ voltage in kV and per unit, its angle, and its marginal cost are specified to the left of the bus. Any loads and generating loads connected to the target bus are drawn above the bus symbol, along with their associated annotation. Also any radial connections to a single bus containing load, generator or switched shunts will be drawn above the bus symbol.

Emanating from the bottom of the bus symbol are all transmission lines and transformers that connect the target bus to its neighbors. The transmission line and transformer symbols are equipped with pie charts and annotation identifying flows as measured at the target bus, as well as arrows to identify the direction of MW flow on the branch. Neighboring buses are represented as filled rectangular regions, with symbol indicators included if other types of devices, such as loads, generators, etc., are attached. When you drag the mouse over one of the neighboring bus symbols, it turns into a pointing finger. Clicking the left mouse button when the mouse cursor is in this shape redefines the target bus to be the bus whose symbol you just clicked. The bus view display is redrawn to show the same sort of display for the newly chosen target. You can go back to the previously displayed target bus by clicking the Back arrow, and then return to this record by clicking the Ahead arrow.

It is useful to think of the bus view displays as nothing more than an additional oneline diagram. In other words, you interact with the objects drawn on the bus view display in the same way you work with objects on a more conventional Simulator oneline. Right-clicking on any power system object will bring up that object’s local menu, which includes a link to the object’s associated information dialog. As on a conventional oneline diagram, flows on a bus view display can be animated. Right-clicking on the bus view display’s background will generate the same local menu as other oneline diagrams.

 

The bus view display can be generated using any of the following methods:

To switch between the bus view and the main oneline, use the Open Windows Menu available on the Views ribbon group on the Case Information ribbon tab, Case Information ribbon tab,or Windows ribbon tab. To close the bus view display, simply close the form using the X button in the top right corner of the bus view display.

 

Note that when viewing a consolidated superbus while using consolidation via the topology processing tool, Simulator will always show circuit breaker symbols on branches, loads, generators, and switched shunts which are open (out of service.)

 

Bus View Options

Layout Options

Show Serial Buses

When putting in the branch connections, the Bus View display will look out into the network and find the next bus which has more than two neighbors. It will then make this the destination bus for that branch of the Bus View. The intermediate buses will then be shown in order above the destination branch. This option works especially well in systems with a lot of multi-section lines.

Show Equivalent Lines

This option indicates to the Bus View display whether or not to include branches representing equivalent circuits as connections in the display.

Represent Multi-Section Line Objects

This option indicates to the Bus View display whether or not to draw multi-section line display objects when appropriate. If this option is not checked, then the intermediate buses of the multi-section lines will be rendered normally. If this option is checked then the intermediate buses of multi-section lines will not be rendered on the bus view and only the terminals of the multi-section line will appear.

Show Field Suffixes

This option specifies whether to display the field values units as suffixes. If this option is not selected, all the fields will be display as a value without units.

Include Field Labels

Selecting this option will place labels for each displayed field on the bus view diagram.

Default Drawing Values

Choosing this option will open the Default Drawing Values for New Objects dialog. Changing these options can change some of the drawing aspects of the bus view, including device color and font size or color.

Dynamic Formatting

Click on this to bring up the Dynamic Formatting for case information displays, and all views and onelines.

Number of Tiers

The bus view can display one or two "tiers" of buses in the display. Use this selection from the Options menu to toggle the number of tiers displayed.

Open Multiple Bus Views

This option indicates whether to open multiple bus views simultaneously. Choices are never, always, and prompt for confirmation when a new additional bus view is about to open.

Show Hints

When this option is checked, holding the cursor over an object will briefly pop up a hint box containing information about that object.

 

Views

Define Custom View

The fields displayed on the bus view can be customized using this option. Clicking on this option will open a customization settings display, in which you can add and remove field definitions for the objects on the bus view display. Customized bus view layouts can be saved with the case for recall, identifiable by a custom bus view layout name. Custom layouts can also be saved to a file for loading into another load flow case.

Input Data

Switching the bus view to Input Data changes the bus view from displaying system state information to displaying input data information. For example, switching to Input Data view will display line impedances and limits, generator minimum and maximum outputs, etc. The default Input Data view fields can be modified using the Define Custom View customization dialog.

System State

Switching the bus view to System State changes the bus view from displaying Input Data information to displaying system state information. This will result in line flows being displayed, voltage and angles displayed, etc., of the current solution state of the system. The default System State view fields can be modified using the Define Custom View customization dialog.