OBJECT-ORIENTED ONLINE NETWORK ANALYSIS

Object-oriented programming has gained widespread acceptance, as its advantages of flexibility and ease of maintenance have been recognized. In power systems analysis, its use in developing graphical user interfaces and database managers have become quite popular. Object-oriented numerical applications, however, poses an interesting problem because solution algorithms often require the manipulation of abstract mathematical objects that may not have physical interpretations (e.g., elements of a factorized matrix), and moreover, may be specific to the numerical algorithm used. This paper presents a method for on-line network analysis using only physically based objects, the same ones that are routinely used in database and user interface applications. It is shown that network analysis, specifically topology processing and power flow, is feasible using message passing between physical objects but some compromise in computation speed is needed to achieve it.