PV Curves
Simulator's PV Curves tool provides the ability to produce plots of maximum power transfer (PV) curves for voltage at any bus in the system, as well as 2-dimensional plots of various quantities tracked during the simulation. In Run Mode, select PV Curves... from the Add Ons ribbon tab to open the PV Curves dialog. The PV Curves dialog allows you to specify the quantities to be tracked during the simulation, control solution parameters, set violation boundaries, and run the PV analysis.
The traditional PV curve process will automatically solve a sequence of power flows at incremental levels of power transfer between a source Injection Group and a sink Injection Group. Injection Groups may contain generators, loads, or a combination of both. Each Contingency defined in the Contingency Analysis Tool that is not flagged to be skipped will be processed and tracked as a separate PV Scenario, along with the pre-contingent base case, at each incremental power transfer. After each successful power flow solution, the user-specified Quantities to Track are recorded and the transfer is increased by the next increment. If a power flow solution fails, then the last successful solution for that scenario is applied and a smaller incremental transfer is applied. The process concludes after finding the maximum power transfer for the user-specified number of critical scenarios.
The PV tool also allows a ramping method that increases the loading on up to two selected interfaces. This process automatically solves a sequence of OPF solutions at incremental levels of increased loading on these interfaces. A flow limit can optionally be enforced on a third interface during the OPF solutions. This process is described in detail in the Interface Ramping topic.