Branch Current State Estimation of Three Phase

Distribution Networks suitable for Paralellization

Niels Blaauwbroek
Phuong Nguyen
Madeleine Gibescu
Han Slootweg
Electrical Energy Systems Group
Eindhoven University of Technology
Eindhoven, the Netherlands
n.blaauwbroek@tue.nl

AbstractThe evolution of distribution networks from passive
to active distribution systems puts new requirements on the
monitoring and control capabilities of these systems. The
development of state estimation algorithms to gain insight in
the actual system state of a distribution network has resulted in
a wide range of distributed and decentralized algorithms that
make use of parallel computing to deal with scalability and
improve computational efficiency. From these state estimation
algorithms, the branch current based state estimation has been
proven suitable for distribution networks in terms of
computational performance and convergence, but suffer from
the fact that nodal voltage calculations are required within each
iteration of the state estimation algorithm. This is usually
accomplished using a forward sweep from the slack node, but
this method is not suitable for parallelization. Therefore, this
work proposes to replace the forward sweep with a Newton-
Raphson optimization for calculating the nodal voltages, which
is suitable for parallelization. The applicability of using
Newton-Raphson for calculating nodal voltages within the state
estimation is proven using numerical results, which clears the
way for future work to implement the Newton-Raphson
method within state estimation in a parallelized approach.
Index Termsbranch current state estimation; distribution
networks; forward sweep; Newton-Raphson; parallelization
I. INTRODUCTION
The energy transition involving the transformation from
passive to active distribution systems requires a detailed
insight in the system states of the distribution network in
order to deal adequately with upcoming uncertainties. These
uncertainties result from an increasing penetration of
distributed renewable energy sources as well as heavy loads
such as electric vehicles and heat pumps, which will stress the
distribution network increasingly and cause congestion,
under/over voltages and three phase unbalanced operation.
Here, suitable monitoring applications can serve as a basis for
control functions deployed by network operators to prevent
and correct these operation limit violations [1], [2]. Until
recently, the development of monitoring applications for
distribution networks was limited due to a lack of
measurements and ICT infrastructure for the exchange of
information. To bridge the gap for establishing monitoring
capabilities in distribution networks, various works have
studied the application of state estimation (SE) in distribution
systems. Although SE is well-established in transmission
systems, it is not directly straightforward to apply this to
distribution systems. First of all, the necessary computational
capacity for the high number of nodes in distribution
networks puts strong requirements on the processing
capabilities of the hardware used. Besides earlier mentioned
problems related to measurement availability and the
physical size of the network, many other problems exist for
distribution system SE. These include that assumptions on
R/X ratios made in transmission systems are often not valid
in distribution networks. Further, distribution networks are
expected to have an increased imbalance between the three
phases in the future due to single phase connected customers
with renewable energy sources or heavy loads. For these
reasons, decoupling methods often applied in transmission
networks result in inaccurate results and convergence
problems when applying to distribution networks.
Instead, dedicated distribution system SE methods are
required that can handle fully three-phase unbalanced
distribution networks with a high amount of nodes. For this
purpose, in recent advancements, parallel and distributed or
decentralized computation methods have been proposed for
power system SE. These methods have the advantage that
parallel computational performance can be exploited to solve
the SE problem for a large number of nodes, as for example
in [1], [3]. Also, branch current SE has been proposed instead
of nodal voltage SE. Branch current SE is known for its
performance for handling power measurements and
obviously current measurements, as well as its capability to
deal with line sensitivity problems as a result of different R/X
ratios [4], [5]. As a disadvantage, branch current SE often has
the problem that the nodal voltages need to be known and
updated regularly while solving the SE problem. Usually, this
is accomplished using a forward sweep from the slack node.
However, a forward sweep is not suitable for parallelization,
since information from upstream nodes is required to
calculate the next node. Especially when the communication
delay between shared resources is relatively large, for
example to a shared memory in a computer cluster or between
geographically distributed nodes, this impacts the
computational performance drastically. Since the application

This research has been funded by The Netherlands Organisation for

Scientific Research (NWO) under the DISPATCH project, number 408-
13-056.
of parallel computing methods and distributed or
decentralized SE methods is becoming highly popular these
days, the application of a forward sweep is not a suitable
approach. Therefore, in this paper we propose a different way
on calculating the nodal voltages within the SE process, not
based on a forward sweep, but based on the Newton-Raphson
method. Parallel computing techniques for solving Newton-
Raphson optimizations for power flow calculations have been
studied in literature [6][9], and can be applied for calculating
the nodal voltages within each iteration of the state
estimation. Specific advantages of the application of Newton-
Raphson instead of a forward sweep are:
The proposed branch current SE can be fully parallelized
using existing parallel computation methods for Newton-
Raphson optimizations.
The proposed approach delivers the same accuracy
performance as existing branch current SE algorithms,
since it solves the same WLS optimization problem.
Therefore it is fully suitable for unbalanced three-phase
distribution networks.
It should be noted that at this stage, the work does not
incorporate the parallelization of the Newton-Raphson
iterations yet. The main purpose of this paper is to show the
applicability of Newton-Raphson for nodal voltage
calculation within branch current WLS optimization. This
will be used in future work to actually exploit the
opportunities of the parallelization. The remainder of the
paper is organized as following. Section II introduces briefly
the background on power system SE, where section II.A goes
in more detail on the specific properties of branch current SE
and its applicability to meshed networks. Thereafter, section
III introduces the newly proposed method for meshed
networks, followed by numerical results obtained from using
this method in section III.C and conclusions in section IV.
II. POWER SYSTEM SE
A frequently used approach for estimating the system
states of power systems is the weighted least squares method
(WLS). WLS SE is solved by minimizing
(1)
In this equation, is the state vector containing the system
states uniquely defining the operation state of the network
and is the function relating the state vector with the
measurement vector according to
(2)
Finally, is the covariance matrix of the normally distributed
measurement error e. In practice, the WLS estimate of (1) is
obtained using the Newton-Raphson method by iteratively
solving
(3)
where
(4)
and the gain matrix is the Jacobian of evaluated
around :
(5)
The measurement Jacobian matrix is obtained by
differentiating the measurement function at , of
which many examples for different power system models and
system states can be found in literature. As stated in the
introduction section, in this paper we focus on branch current
SE, as detailed in the next section.
A. Branch current SE
If the state vector is constructed of nodal voltages and
their corresponding angles, depending on the type of
measurements, the measurement function can often be
composed of the state variables and constant network
variables such as the branch impedance. However, this is
different in branch current SE, where the state vector is
constructed of branch currents and their corresponding
angles. Unless direct branch current measurements are
concerned, in branch current SE, is also dependent on the
nodal voltages. This is for example the case for dealing with
branch (active and reactive) power measurements as well as
(active and reactive) power injection measurements [4]. This
means that the nodal voltages need to be updated within each
Newton-Raphson iteration of (3) based on the latest branch
current and angles estimate . The usual approach for
obtaining the nodal voltages is by using a forward sweep from
the slack node. As stated in the introduction, this a forward
sweep is not suitable for parallel or distributed/decentralized
computing, as each subsequent calculation of a nodal voltage
is dependent on its direct upstream nodal voltage. This results
in the need for calculating the nodal voltage sequentially.
Since parallel processing improves performance only when
multiple tasks can be performed at the same time, the
advantages of parallelization cannot be exploited for the
traditional forward sweep. Performance slowdown will
occur, especially if communication delays to shared
(memory) resources or between different computing nodes
are relatively large. Therefore, we replace the forward sweep
by the Newton-Raphson method, as detailed in section III.
III. BCSE FOR MESHED DISTRIBUTION NETWORKS
In this work, we assume a network topology with nodes
, where is the set of all nodes in the network. The
subset is the set of all nodes that are connected to node
. Further, we define the vector of system states to consist
of all the branch currents and corresponding angles
(6)
where is the vector containing all current magnitudes ,
for each branch from node to node and all
phases , , . Also, is the vector containing all
corresponding current angles , . As stated before, also the
nodal voltage and angle of the slack node can be included in
, but since this will not influence the remainder of this paper,
we will leave them out for simplicity reasons.
Further, we define a vector with derived system variables
containing all the nodal voltages and corresponding angles
(7)
where is the vector containing all voltage magnitudes ,
for each node and all phases , , . Also, is
the vector containing all corresponding voltage angles
, .
A. Alternative nodal voltage calculation
In this paper, the forward sweep usually applied in WLS
, , , ,
SE is replaced with a Newton-Raphson approach for
, ,
calculating the nodal voltages. This is formulated as (15)

, , (8) , , , ,

where
From this, we can now derive the entries for the Jacobian
matrix as described in the following subsections.
, , , (9)

Here, subscripts and indicate for active respectively 1) Derivatives with respect to voltage magnitudes
reactive mismatch equations respectively. Now, expanding For the derivative of the mismatch equations for active
into its Taylor series around , gives current , and reactive current , at node and phase
with respect to the nodal voltage at node and phase
, , , , we get:
, (10)
,
, cos , sin (16)

From here, the following subsections will go into detail
on the mismatch equations and the Jacobian entries of the
derivatives of both active and reactive mismatch equations ,
, sin , cos (17)
with respect to voltage magnitudes and angles.

B. Mismatch equations and the Jacobian matrix
Similarly, the derivative of the mismatch equations for
In order to calculate the nodal voltages based on the latest active current , and reactive current , at node and
estimate of the branch currents, we use mismatch equations
in terms of the nodal voltages and branch currents and phase with respect to the boundary nodal voltage
iteratively solve them for the nodal voltages based on the with and phase , , is
Newton-Raphson method. First we define the three phase
branch admittance matrix between node and node ,
as , sin , , cos ,
(18)
,
, , ,
, , , (11)
,
, , , , sin , , cos , (19)
,
Now, we can write down the mismatch equations for each
node in terms of nodal voltages and branch currents 2) Derivatives with respect to voltage angles
according to
For the derivative of the mismatch equations for active
current , and reactive current , at node and phase
, , (12)

with respect to the nodal voltage at node and phase
, , , we get:
, , (13) ,
, , , , (20)

In this, we define and ,
where , , , and are the three phase vectors ,
containing the magnitudes and angles , , and , , , , (21)
respectively for all the phases , , . Further, we

define , and , to be the real and imaginary parts of Similarly, the derivative of the mismatch equations for
. Similarly, , and , are the real and imaginary active current , and reactive current , at node and
parts of . The mismatch equations can now be rewritten phase with respect to the boundary nodal voltage
as with and phase , , is
,
, , , , (22)
, , , ,

, ,
(14)
,
, , , , , , , (23)

C. Algorithm
Now, the overall algorithm of the branch current SE for
meshed network is as following:
ALGORITHM 1:
1 Initialize and
2 While tol
3 Calculate ,
4 While tol
5 Calculate , ,
6 End
7
8 End
First, and are initialized, for example by taking the
result from the previous time interval or other historical data.
Thereafter, the WLS optimization based on Newton-Raphson
of (3) starts, in each iteration based on the latest available
and . The Newton-Raphson algorithm for the WLS
optimization converges after | | tol . Within
each iteration of the WLS optimization, the nodal voltages
are calculated by iteratively solving the mismatch equations
using (8). These Newton-Raphson optimizations can be
solved using existing parallel computing methods as
mentioned in the introduction section. The number of
iterations required for this depends on the tolerance tol and
can be optimized as detailed in section IV.
D. Meshed networks
As meshed networks are expected to become a more
popular topology in distribution networks for reasons of
reliability and efficiency, new methods need to be found to
deal with densely meshed networks in branch current SE.
This problem has been addressed earlier by including
Kirchhoff Voltage Law (KVL) constraints for each mesh [5],
[10] in the optimization problem using Lagrangian
multipliers. However, as explained in section II, the gain
matrix of the SE optimization problem increases with the
size and the number of the loop and therefore also the
computation time for inversing in each iteration of the SE
algorithm. Since the inversion of a matrix scales
polynomially with the size of the matrix, this is not a feasible
solution for large densely meshed networks. In order to
ensure proper convergence of the algorithm, this paper adopts
the inclusion of pseudo measurements describing the KVL
constraints for each mesh as presented in [5]. The advantage
of this approach is that the Newton-Raphson algorithm
remains fully compatible with the meshed structure, without
any additional constraints on the optimization problem of
(25). Therefore, the size of the gain matrix remains limited
to the number of system states, resulting in higher
computational performance compared to including
Lagrangian multipliers for the constraints.
IV. NUMERICAL SIMULATION RESULTS
The developed SE algorithm has been tested on a
modified version of the IEEE 55 load LV test feeder. The
original test feeder as displayed in blue in Figure 1 is
modified in such a way that all fragmented branches of the
same cable type are merged into a single branch, while
preserving the original length of the original branches.
Furthermore, all open line sections (without load) are
removed, resulting in a 116 branch network with a total
length of about 1.2 km. The modified network is
schematically displayed in red in Figure 1, where the 55 loads
are indicated with a (*).
Figure 1: IEEE LV test feeder, original (blue), modified (red) and loads (*)
This modified LV test feeder has been implemented in
three phase using Simulink, where distributed parameter lines
have been used to accurately model the cables. Since no
capacitances are specified for the IEEE LV test feeder, the
capacitances have been altered to match a wave speed of
200.000 km/h for more realistic results on the reactive power
flows. In the SE, these capacitances are considered by taking
into account their additional reactive power injection at
node for the three phases in the mismatch equations:
(24)
2
Here is the 3x3 unit matrix, the 3x3 identity matrix and
is the phase to phase voltage vector. Furthermore, the
matrix contains the total phase to ground and phase to
phase capacitances for the line . These additions are
especially important for meshed configurations, as otherwise
KVL constraints cannot be satisfied properly and the voltage
calculation using Newton-Raphson might not converge.
The obtained modified test network has been tested using
a simulation platform as presented in [2]. From this, power
injection measurements are taken from smart meters at each
load and complemented with zero-injection pseudo
measurements at the nodes without load. Further, a voltage
measurement has been added to the substation, bringing the
number of real measurements in the test case to 56 in total.
The measurements are communicated to the SE processing
unit with a time delay and have a normally distributed error
with 10% variance. After obtaining the estimated system
states, the SE processing unit compares the estimated system
state with the actual system states at that moment, resulting
in an average percentage error and a maximum
percentage error over time. As an example Figure 2
shows the percentage error between the nodal voltages from
the simulation model and the nodal voltages derived from the
system states, averaged over all nodes and all phases. In this
paper, the numerical results will not focus on the accuracy
obtained depending on different standard deviations in
measurement errors, since this is already covered by many
other works. The presented SE algorithm obviously has the
same accuracy when the solving tolerance for obtaining the
nodal voltages is equal to that of a forward sweep. Therefore,
focus is instead placed on the obtained estimation accuracy
depending on the solving tolerance in order to find the
optimal balance between computation speed and estimation
accuracy. When talking about solving tolerance, both the
 If we now assume a relatively high communication delay
0.7
in a multi area decentralized state estimation algorithm, we
can take the number of times that information needs to be
0.6
exchanged between different areas as a measure for the total
0.5
running time of the algorithm. This number is about 15.98 on
average in case 3 as reported in Table 1 for the Newton-
0.4
Raphson approach. For the traditional forward sweep
error [%]

approach, this will be the number of sequential nodal voltage

0.3
forward sweep calculations times the number of WLS
iterations which is 3.57. Therefore, for the case study
0.2 presented, the proposed approach using Newton-Raphson
will be faster if the number of sequential zones is larger than
0.1 or equal to 15.98/3.57 5. Since this number is
expectably realistic to occur, the proposed method is feasible.
0 When more physical measurements are replaced by
0 4 8 12 16 20 24
time [h]
inaccurate pseudo measurements, the number of WLS
iterations is expected to increase, possibly increasing the
Figure 2: Percentage error between estimation and simulation minimum number of sequential zones.
tolerance tol for the WLS iterations, as well as the V. CONCLUSIONS AND DISCUSSION
tolerance tol for solving the nodal voltages within each In this work, a new branch current SE approach has been
WLS iteration are relevant. For this purpose, we use the presented that is suitable for parallelization using parallel
number of required matrix inversions as a measure for the Newton-Raphson methods. To this extend, the often used
computational performance. Each iteration of the Newton- forward sweep approach for calculating nodal voltages has
Raphson nodal voltage calculation involves a matrix been replaced with a Newton-Raphson approach, making the
inversion, as does each iteration of the WLS itself. The calculation of the nodal voltages suitable for parallel
average number of nodal voltage Newton-Raphson iterations computing. The applicability of the Newton-Raphson method
iter as well as the average number of WLS iterations for this purpose has been proven using numerical simulations,
iter for different tolerances are listed in Table 1. The from which we can conclude that the number of iterations can
average number of matrix inversions inv before be optimized by tuning the solver tolerance. Future work will
conversion is calculated as be required to implement the proposed method using the
existing methods for parallelizing Newton-Raphson
inv iter 1 iter (25)
optimization algorithms that are widely available in literature.
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