--In view of an ongoing trend that more and more new reserachers/facuties from other fields, e.g., cyber security, physics, are entering into the power engineering fields, partly because of the development of the "smart grid", I write this brief introduction. It can be helpful, I think, for new ( in terms of  power sytem)  researcheres to get to know some open software for power system analysis, to better understand some basic stuffs of power systems, and to use a suitable tool in their researches. The following are some of the most commonly-used  power sytem open software or toolbox, featuring different application domains and/or programming languages.

·       PSAT--Matlab

This is the first open source project that I got to know when I was a undergraduate student back in 2007. It is not exaggerating to say that it has been the most popular Matlab-based power system toolbox, since it provides almost all common power system analysis algorithms, ranging from load flow to short circuit analysis, to transient stability analysis. Comomly used power system equipment models have also been developed. Further, its broad usage and big user community (http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/psatforum/) help it grow and mature. The latest version is 2.1.8.

For details:  http://www3.uclm.es/profesorado/federico.milano/psat.htm

·       Matpower—Matlab

It is specially designed for power market and optimization related application in power systems.Of course, common Aclf and Dclf algorithms are also provided.  Based on my usage ( not much), the code is easy to followed and modified.

For details:  http://www.pserc.cornell.edu/matpower/

·       InterPSS—Java

InterPSS (Internet technology based PowerSystem Simulator) is a free and open software development project. Itwas first initiated and developed Dr. Mike Zhou back in 2006. I have been a developer member since August 2008. What makes it different from the other software/toolbox is that it employs modern software architecture idea and OOP programming, dependence injection techniques, etc., enabling it to have an open and loosely coupled system architecture, thus it is designed and developed for integration and extension right from the very beginning, from architecture to algorithm.

Features:

User-friendly API for power system network data processing at bus/branch and network level.

ACLFAnalysis

DCLF and sensitivity analysis

AC/DC LF based contingency analysis

Short circuit analysis

Transient stability analysis

Optimization—Integration with GAMS

High performance computing: Grid computing, Multithreading-based parallel computing

Cloud-based power system analysis: InterPSS 2.0

For details: http://www.interpss.org/

·       Pypower—Python, SciPy

PYPOWER is a power flow and optimal power flow (OPF) solver. Current features include:

• DC and AC (Newton’s method & Fast Decoupled) power flow and

• DC and AC optimal power flow (OPF)

PYPOWER is a translation of MATPOWER to the Python programming language using SciPy.

·       MinPower—Python

Minpower is designed to make solving ED, OPF,and UC problems simple and intuitive. Traditional approaches to solving these problems are limited by: 1) low level languages; 2) expensive software; 3) being solver dependent.

http://minpowertoolkit.com/   and http://minpowertoolkit.com/minpower.pdf