Load Flow Outer-Loops configuration#

PowSyBl Open LoadFlow provides out of the box two mechanisms for configuring Outer-Loops via Load Flow parameters:

  • Option 1: using “basic” parameters: This is the standard usage. For example setting useReactiveLimits will configure an OuterLoop dedicated to handling reactive power limits of generators, static VAR compensators, etc…

  • Option 2: using the more advanced outerLoopNames parameter, allowing to tune not only the outer-loops creation, but also specifying a specific order for OuterLoops execution.

Refer to the outerLoopNames Load Flow parameter documentation for more details about these two standard ways of configuring Outer Loops.

For even more advanced usage, it is possible to plug your own Outer-Loops configuration into PowSyBl Open LoadFlow. To do so, you will have to provide via the Java Service Loader your own implementation of the following interfaces, defined in package com.powsybl.openloadflow.lf.outerloop.config:

  • AcOuterLoopConfig for AC LoadFlow

  • DcOuterLoopConfig for DC LoadFlow

In fact, PowSyBl Open LoadFlow internally is using these interfaces for the two options described at the beginning of this chapter:

  • if outerLoopNames parameter is blank, PowSyBl Open LoadFlow uses its own internal implementation called DefaultAcOuterLoopConfig / DefaultDcOuterLoopConfig

  • if outerLoopNames parameter is used, PowSyBl Open LoadFlow uses its own internal implementation called ExplicitAcOuterLoopConfig / ExplicitDcOuterLoopConfig

If an alternative implementation of AcOuterLoopConfig / DcOuterLoopConfigis provided via the Java Service Loader, it will be used as a replacement of the Open LoadFlow implementations above. The use cases typically are:

  • customizing the creation and/or ordering of the PowSyBl Open LoadFlow provided Outer-Loops

  • creating new Outer-Loop types/implementations in your own private code, by implementing new AcOuterLoop / DcOuterLoop, then instantiating these Outer-Loops in your custom Outer-Loops configuration.

Some tips:

  • instead of re-creating your own Outer-Loop configuration implementation from scratch, you could instead benefit from existing classes and extend them as needed, e.g. for AC Load Flow Outer-Loops configuration you may find it easier to extend either AbstractAcOuterLoopConfig or DefaultAcOuterLoopConfig.

  • If you are creating new Outer-Loop types/implementations, typically you are going to need more data from the network. This is a typical use case of the LfNetwork Loader PostProcessors