Algorithm for visualizing substation areas in electric power systems

Electric power distribution systems can be represented with mathematical graphs in which the hub nodes are substations receiving electric power from the transmission system and delivering it to the consumers via feeders consisting of transformers, junctions, cables and power lines. High-quality diagrams depicting these systems are key elements of efficient monitoring and control. Existing automatic diagram generation solutions are usually limited to drawing single feeders or contain significant simplifications of the underlying distribution system e.g., visualize multiple feeders with their interconnections removed. The goal of this research was to develop an algorithm capable of generating visually-pleasing diagrams of substation areas consisting of a single hub node and a complex network of thousands of interconnected elements. The resulting algorithm was defined as a sequence of transformations which takes a mathematical graph as input and generates a one-line diagram as output. Multiple novel approaches are incorporated to optimize the algorithm thereby allowing it to run efficiently on regular desktop computers. Also, a novel diagram quality evaluation procedure was developed to automatically measure and compare the usability of each generated diagram. The algorithm was tested on 2510 different substation areas of various complexity extracted from the network models of real-life, European distribution systems. The quality of the generated diagrams was measured with the novel evaluation procedure and verified with a human domain experts on a subset of the resulting diagrams. Based on these analyses, it was concluded that the generated diagrams are usable in newly built supervisory and control systems with minimum human intervention.