Discuss the merits and weaknesses of the main solution techn

Discuss the merits and weaknesses of the main solution techniques for load flow calculation.

Solution

Guass – Seidel Method:
Guass seidel method is one of the common methods employed for solving power flow equations.

Advantages:

Simplicity in technique
Small computer memory requirement
Less computational time per iteration

Disadvantages:

Slow rate of convergence resulting in larger number of iterations
Increase in the number of iterations with increase in the number of buses

Newton Raphson Method:

Newton Raphson method is the sophisticated and important method for solving power flow studies particularly for the complex power systems. Newton Raphson method is based on Taylor’s series and partial derivatives.Advantages:

Newton Raphson method needs less number of iterations to reach convergence, takes less computation time
More accurate and not sensitive to the factors such like slack bus selection, regulation transformers etc. and the number of iterations required in this method is almost independent of system size.

Disadvantages:

More calculations involved in each iteration and require large computation time per iteration and large computer memory
Difficult solution technique (programming is difficult)