Performance Benchmark of Modelica Time-Domain Power System Automated Simulations using Python

Abstract

In this paper, a benchmark between solvers and Modelica tools for time-domain simulations of a power system model is presented. A Python-based approach is employed to automate Modelica simulations and compute performance metrics. This routine is employed to compare the performance of a commercial (Dymola) against an open-source (OpenModelica) simulation tool with different solver settings. Python scripts are developed to execute a dynamic simulation of a common model for power system studies with 49 states and 420 variables in three different scenarios. This degree of automation makes it easier to change solver settings and tools during execution. The performance of each of the tools is assessed through metrics such as execution time and CPU utilization. The quantitative comparison results provide a clear reference to the performance of the tools and solvers for the execution of time-domain simulations with a significant degree of complexity. The commercial tool offers better performance for variable-step solver, but the performance of the open-source software shows significantly faster results for fixed-step solvers.

Power Flow Record Structures to Initialize OpenIPSL Phasor Time-Domain Simulations with Python

“…The Open Instance Power System Library (OpenIPSL) is an open-source library of power system component models written entirely in Modelica (Baudette et al 2018). Beyond the inherent advantages of the Modelica language, OpenIPSL components are constantly crossvalidated against commercial packages such as PSS/E, producing practically the same results (Laera 2016) and exhibiting the same or even better simulation performance (see Henningsson, Olsson, and Vanfretti (2019) and Dorado-Rojas, Navarro Catalán, et al (2020)).…”