Single Line Diagram - SVG Writing

We are showing in this guide how to create some single line diagrams, like the one above. We first generate such a diagram from a test network, then from a CGMES file. To that end, we use the com.powsybl.sld.SingleLineDiagram class, which is the central API of powsybl-single-line-diagram.

Prerequisites

Maven dependencies

First of all, we need some Maven dependencies.

• If you want to get a quick start, please add the powsybl-starter dependency to your pom file:

<dependency>
    <groupId>com.powsybl</groupId>
    <artifactId>powsybl-starter</artifactId>
    <version>2025.2.0</version>
</dependency>

• If you only want to import the strictly needed dependencies for this tutorial, you can write a more detailed pom file:

Roll/unroll dependencies

{% highlight xml %}

com.powsybl powsybl-dependencies ${powsybl-dependencies.version} pom import com.powsybl powsybl-single-line-diagram-core com.powsybl powsybl-iidm-impl com.powsybl powsybl-iidm-test com.powsybl powsybl-cgmes-conversion com.powsybl powsybl-triple-store-impl-rdf4j org.slf4j slf4j-simple ${slf4j.version} 2025.2.0 1.7.22

{% endhighlight %}

Here are some details about these dependencies (see also the [powsybl artifacts documentation page]()): - `powsybl-single-line-diagram-core` is the core module of single-line-diagram, - `powsybl-iidm-impl` is used to deal with the network model, - `powsybl-iidm-test` is used to load the test network, - `powsybl-cgmes-conversion` and `powsybl-triple-store-impl-rdf4j` are used to import a CGMES file, - `slf4j-simple` allows you to have simple logging capabilities.

Diagrams from a test network

We first create the node/breaker test Network we are interested in:

Network network = FictitiousSwitchFactory.create();

Generating a voltage level diagram

We can generate the SVG diagram file for voltage level N with a single line of code:

SingleLineDiagram.draw(network, "N", "/tmp/n.svg");

Note that we could also use a method specific for voltage levels:

SingleLineDiagram.drawVoltageLevel(network, "N", "/tmp/n.svg");

We obtain the following SVG:

Similarly, we could generate a SVG for voltage level C:

SingleLineDiagram.draw(network, "C", "/tmp/c.svg");

leading to the following diagram:

Generating the substation diagram

In order to build the diagram for the whole substation, named A, containing both voltage levels displayed previously, we may use the same interface:

SingleLineDiagram.draw(network, "A", "/tmp/a.svg");

Similarly to before, there is also a method specific for substations which we could have used:

SingleLineDiagram.drawSubstation(network, "A", "/tmp/a.svg");

In both cases, we obtain the following wider SVG file:

Diagrams from a CGMES file

First of all, we need to download a sample file from ENTSO-E here

This file is named CGMES_v2_4_15_MicroGridTestConfiguration_T4_Assembled_NB_Complete_v2.zip.

We first import this sample Network we are interested in:

String file = "/path/to/file/CGMES_v2_4_15_MicroGridTestConfiguration_T4_Assembled_NB_Complete_v2.zip";
Network network = Network.read(file);

Generating a voltage level diagram

Once the network is loaded, we can generate diagrams like in previous section. We first generate a SVG for the voltage level named 110 in substation PP_Brussels (corresponding id is _8bbd7e74-ae20-4dce-8780-c20f8e18c2e0). Note that, as the ids are not very human-readable, we customize the parameters to have the names displayed instead of the ids. Therefore, we use the slightly more complex interface SingleLineDiagram.draw(network, id, path, parameters).

// Use custom parameters to have the names displayed instead of the ids
SvgParameters svgParameters = new SvgParameters().setUseName(true);
SldParameters sldParameters = new SldParameters().setSvgParameters(svgParameters);
// Draw the diagram of voltage level 110 in substation PP_Brussels (id _8bbd7e74-ae20-4dce-8780-c20f8e18c2e0)
SingleLineDiagram.draw(network, "8bbd7e74-ae20-4dce-8780-c20f8e18c2e0", Paths.get("/tmp/Brussels110.svg"), sldParameters);

We obtain the following SVG:

Generating a substation diagram

Similarly to voltage level diagrams, we can generate substation diagrams. We generate the SVG diagram for the substation called PP_Amsterdam, which is containing four voltage levels. We customize a bit further the parameters: the feeder names in this substation are quite long, hence we rotate them to avoid overlapping.

// Customize further the parameters to have the feeders label rotated, in order to avoid overlapping
svgParameters.setLabelDiagonal(true);

// Draw the diagram of substation PP_Amsterdam (id _c49942d6-8b01-4b01-b5e8-f1180f84906c)
SingleLineDiagram.draw(network, "c49942d6-8b01-4b01-b5e8-f1180f84906c", Paths.get("/tmp/AmsterdamSubstation.svg"), sldParameters);

We then obtain the following SVG file representing the whole PP_Amsterdam substation with its three voltage levels:

That’s it, you are now able to generate diagrams for substations and voltage levels! You can now try to change the default layout settings by reading the next guide SVG Layouts.