Toward Topologically Based Upper Bounds on the Number of Power Flow Solutions

Understand

The power flow equations, which relate power injections and voltage phasors, are at the heart of many electric power system computations.

• While Newton-based methods typically find the "high-voltage" solution to the power flow equations, which is of primary interest, there are potentially many "low-voltage" solutions that are useful for certain analyses.
• This paper addresses the number of solutions to the power flow equations.
• There exist upper bounds on the number of power flow solutions; however, there is only limited work regarding bounds that are functions of network topology.