Harmony search method based parallel contingency analysis

Power system security management is one of the key problems in power system analysis. Power system management center operators need to simulate contingencies as fast as possible and take the remedial actions in time. These contingency analyses comprise of the outages of the branches, transformers and other power system components. This paper solves branch outage problem using a bounded approach. Harmony search method is used to solve the local constrained optimization problem of the bounded approach. Several outage simulations using IEEE 14, 30, and 118 bus systems are performed and compared against AC power flow in terms of accuracy. In order to speed up the contingency simulation, the problem is also solved in a parallel environment. Speed up results of the IEEE 118 and 300 bus test systems are given.