Sensitivity analysis applied to nodal technical losses evaluation in power transmission systems

Sensitivity analysis oriented by optimal power flow problem is applied in this work to estimate nodal technical losses in power transmission networks in a smart grid environment. This approach aims to efficiently provide active power loss indices as a result of load variations at each single load bus connected to the system. Unlike the power flow algorithm, this technique does not require an iterative process to find the solution, which results in a faster methodology with high accuracy and reduced computational cost, even when considering all the characteristics of the system. The methodology starts from a known optimal solution obtained by optimal power flow, considered as the base case. From the base case solution, new solutions can be evaluated by sensitivity analysis when system load bus perturbations occur. Tests were carried out on the IEEE 14 and 118 bus systems in order to evaluate the proposed technique performance. Copyright (c) 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.