Parallel power flow solutions using a biconjugate gradient algorithm and a Newton method: A GPU-based approach

A new approach to solve the power flow problem based on graphic processing units is presented in this paper. A Newton method is implemented to solve the set of nonlinear equations of the power flow formulation. A parallel kernel for the biconjugate gradient method allows solving the voltage corrections on a graphic processing card. While the evaluation of the Jacobian matrix is carried out on the CPU of the host PC, the most demanding task of the iterative biconjugate gradient method for the solution of a linear system is performed on the GPU. Furthermore, a row-indexed sparse storage scheme implemented in the host PC and on the device graphic card allows providing efficient solutions in terms of storage and computational effort. A test case based on the IEEE-118 node system is solved to show the accuracy and efficiency of power flow solutions computed on the graphic processing unit.