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Exploring Application of Machine Learning to Power System Analysis

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Exploring Application of Machine Learning
To Power System Analysis
M. Zhou, Member, IEEE
 input/output training pairs, derive a general NN model for the
Abstract--InterPSS has been integrated with Google's
TensorFlow machine learning (ML) engine to create an open
platform for exploring application of ML to power system
analysis. The open platform is introduced with a discussion of its
system architecture. Using a loadflow study case as an example,
neural network models are trained to predict the bus voltage, the
branch active power flow and max branch power flow by N-1
contingency analysis when the bus injection power is given. The
preliminary results of exploring application of ML to power
system analysis are presented.
Index Terms--Deep Machine Learning, Power System
Analysis, InterPSS.
I. INTRODUCTION
A FTER the AlphaGo wining game, there is a renewed
interest in artificial intelligence (AI), especially in the
area of Deep Machine Learning (ML). Google open-
sourced its TensorFlow ML engine[1], which is the brain
power behind AlphaGo. InterPSS[2] has been integrated with
TensorFlow to create an open platform for exploring
application of ML to power system analysis. The primary goal
of the open platform is to make the powerful TensorFlow ML
engine accessible to the power engineering community for the
power system analysis purpose. InterPSS is an open power
system simulation software development project. It was
created in 2005 and has been continuous in development by a
group of volunteers.
The use of automatic learning for real-time security
assessment was first envisioned in the late 1960s by Dy-
Liacco. Despite repetitive attempts, there are still no large-
scale industrial applications of machine-learning to off-line
and on-line power system analysis. The main reason is that the
existing automatic-learning methods were not powerful
enough, and the amount of possible study cases was limited by
capability of the available computation tools.[4]
An overview of machine learning is first presented. Then
the open platform is introduced and followed by a sample
study case to illustrate possible ways to use ML for power
system analysis.
II. MACHINE LEARNING
The main ideal of neural network (NN) based machine
learning (ML) can be summarized as: Given a set of relevant
This work was supported in part by the State Grid of China under the
"Thousand Talents Plan" special research grant (5206001600A3).
Mike Zhou is with the State Grid Electric Power Research Institute of
China, Beijing, China (e-mail: mike.zhou@interpss.org).
1
underlying input/output relationship, which will be used to
predict output values for any new unseen input. This approach
is sometimes also called supervised learning.
In power system steady-state analysis, the problem usually
can be formulated as to solve a set of non-linear equations, as
shown below:
(1)
The non-linear equation is commonly solved by some
numerical method, such as Newton-Raphson for loadflow
analysis. We would like to explore the possibility to use the
ML approach to solve the problem, e.g. to train an NN model
and use it to predict the output directly.
Fig. 1. A Single Neural Network Layer
Neural networks typically consist of multiple layers, and the
signal path traverses from the input to the output layer of
neural units. Back propagation is the use of forward
stimulation to reset weights on the "front" neural units. This is
done in combination with training or optimization where the
correct result (output in the training data) is known. A typical
NN model is shown in the Fig.1. The output of previous layer
[x] is weighted-summarized to produce [y] for the next layer,
as illustrated in the equation below:
(2)
where, W - weight matrix, b - bias vector.
TensorFlow is an open source software library by Google
for numerical computation using data flow graphs. Nodes in
the graph represent mathematical operations, while the graph
edges represent the multidimensional data arrays (tensors)
communicated between them. The flexible architecture allows
to deploy computation to one or more CPUs or GPUs, which
makes solving large-scale ML problems possible.
III. AN OPEN PLATFORM
InterPSS has been integrated with TensorFlow to create an
open platform for exploring application of ML to power
system analysis.[3] The platform system architecture is shown

in the figure below:
Fig. 2. The Platform System Architecture
There are three modules in the system: 1) TensorFlow ML
engine; 2) InterPSS power system analysis model service; and
3) training case generator. The power system model service
module provides service to the TensorFlow ML engine, 1) to
generate training data to train NN model; 2) provide service
for checking model prediction accuracy.
An NN model is in general trained for certain purpose using
a set of training data relevant to the problem to be solved. The
system architecture allows different training case generator to
be plugged-in for different model training purposes. The
training data could be obtained from field measurement or
generated from power system analysis model. The platform
system architecture supports both types of training case
generation. Certain types of training data, for example, power
system contingency analysis data, can be only generated using
the analysis model approach.
IV. SAMPLE STUDY CASE
Power system loadflow analysis problem could be
formulated as follows:
(i = 1, ... n) (3)
Where, V, θ are bus voltage magnitude and angle; P, Q bus
active, reactive power injection; g+jb branch admittance.
In loadflow study, P, Q are given for PQ bus type; bus P, V
for PV bus type; bus V, θ for swing bus type. Bus V, θ are
solved for PQ bus type; bus Q, θ for PV bus type; bus P, Q for
swing bus type. The IEEE-14Bus loadflow test system is used
for the study. In the test system, power is flowing from the
two generation buses (Buses-1,2) to the load bus area (Buses-
12,13,14) in the system. We want to train NN models to
predict network loadflow solution (bus voltage or branch
active power flow) and largest branch power flow value of
each branch in the test system in N-1 contingency analysis
(CA), when the total power flow from the generation buses to
the load buses is varying, for example, by a load scaling factor
of 1.2 (20% increase from the base case).
In the exercise, the load scaling factor changes in the range
[0.5~1.5] to generate 50 training cases evenly scattered in the
range by the training case generator to train the NN models for
the prediction. The TensorFlow Gradient Descent Optimizer is
used for the NN model training with a learning rate of 0.001
and 10K training steps.
Results by the NN model prediction and comparison of
them with accurate results by loadflow and N-1 CA are shown
in Tables-I~III. Comparison of the bus voltage prediction
against the accurate loadflow results for a set of selected buses
and three load scaling factors are shown in Table-I.
Comparison of the branch active power flow prediction
against the accurate loadflow results are shown in Table-II.
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Comparison of the largest branch power flow prediction in N-
1 CA with the accurate results are shown in Table-III. The
preliminary results of exploring the application of ML to
power system analysis are very interesting, especially the
largest branch flow prediction case, since there is no
underlying mathematic model to describe the relationship.
TABLE I
Bus Voltage Prediction (LF) Accuracy Comparison
TABLE II
Branch P Prediction (LF) Accuracy Comparison
TABLE III
Largest Branch P Prediction (CA) Accuracy Comparison
V. SUMMARY
There is a renewed interest in Machine Learning (ML).
InterPSS has been integrated with the TensorFlow ML engine,
and an open platform for exploring application of ML to
power system analysis has been created and introduced. Using
a loadflow study case as an example, neural network models
are trained to predict bus voltage, branch active power flow
and largest branch power flow in N-1 contingency analysis
when the bus power injection is given. The preliminary results
are very interesting and promising. The platform has been
open-sourced so that others could explore more complex
power system analysis scenarios using the ML approach by
extending the platform. Also more capability and sample study
cases will be added to the platform.
VI. REFERENCES
[1] Google, "TensorFlow - An open-source software library for Machine
Intelligence," available on the Web: www.tensorflow.org
[2] InterPSS, "The InterPSS Project," available on the Web:
www.interpss.org.
[3] InterPSS, "TensorFlow Based Deep Machine Learning (ML) For Power
System Analysis," available on the Web: www.github.com/interpss/
DeepMachineLearning
[4] L. Wehenkel, "Machine-Learning Approaches to Power-System Security
Assessment," IEEE Expert Sept/Oct 1997, pp60-72.
Mike Zhou (M’90) obtained his B.S. from Hunan University M.S. and PhD.
from Tsinghua University. He was an assistant professor at University of
Saskatchewan 1990-1992, served as the VP in charging of power distribution
system software development at EDSA Micro Corporation 1992-1997. He
was a Senior Computer System Architect with TIBCO Software Inc. 2000-
2014. He joint State Grid Electric Power Research Institute of China as a
Chief Scientist in 2014, sponsored by the "Thousand Talents Plan" program.