Are there any other features you’d like us to be thinking about for our next version? Just let us know via email at info@powerworld.com. Or give us a call at (217) 384-6330. We appreciate input from our customers.

The following is a list of many of the most noticeable changes to Simulator for Version 11.0, which builds on PowerWorld Corporation’s dedication to creating powerful analysis software that is easy to use.

Graphical User Interface: We’ve included several new features that make navigating and interpreting the results of your analysis faster and easier.

• Updated the look and feel of Simulator to match the latest platforms.

• Support of multi-monitor displays so that your onelines can be spread across your screens.

• New optional "free-floating windows" mode.

• Ability to use keyboard shortcuts to open oneline diagrams or AUX files at a single key stroke.

• More options for how log messages are generated so that you may format color and whether names/kv, numbers, or both are used.

New Oneline Diagram Features

• Unlimited Drawing Undo Feature

• Added more abilities to the Select by Criteria dialog so that the criteria may be based off advanced filters in addition to area, zone, layers, and voltage.

• Support for view 3-dimensional oneline diagrams.

• The speed of rendering a large diagram has been greatly enhanced making the display of very large diagrams possible.  This includes a particularly large improvement for selected items.

• Ability to resize and rotate oneline objects easily with your mouse.

• Great enhancements for quickly formating your diagrams.

• Added Dynamic Formatting of oneline objects and case information displays based on the system information.

• Added the ability to specify with individual pie charts whether they show MW, MVar, MVA, PTDF, Amp, or Max Contingency loading.  You may then place different pie charts on the same transmission line.

• Added more color options for pie charts based on what field they are showing.

• Added ability to use special pie charts to highlight out-of-service transmission lines.

• Added Translucent Image Support. 

• Added ability to specify whether a branch is “normally open”.  You may then color circuit breakers differently based on whether they are normally open or not.

• Added ability to optionally hide the circuit breakers on load, shunt and generator objects.

• Emphasis of oneline objects using alpha-blending.

• Added the ability to specify oneline options and contour information with a saved view.

• New Line Gauge objects

• Added the ability to embed a oneline inside of another oneline.

• Made numerous options for how a substation object is displayed.

• Enhanced the formatting of multiple selected objects so that you can change the field, rotation angle, and other object characteristics.

• Enhanced the default drawing values so that areas, zones, super areas and substations have their own settings.  This includes the ability to specify the default fields which should appear around the objects as they are drawn also.

• Added the ability to create contour color maps which map by value directly instead of going through the percentage mapping between Maximum and Minimum values first.

• This is a new option under the Option> to specify whether to "Show Field Suffixes".  If you uncheck this option, then the units which appear on most fields will be removed.  Using this in conjunction with the "Include Field Labels" option is encouraged.

Time Step Simulation for Running Multiple Hours

•  Added a completely new tool for specifying the variation of values over time to create a time step simulation.

• May be used to model load changes, generation changes, line status changes, or really any value which varies over time.

• You may specify which values to track over time and these will be stored for use in plotting after the time step simulation is run.

Geographic Information System (GIS) Support

• Added to the PowerWorld Library of Borders to include Borders for the entire World.

• Added a new map projection for use with borders outside of North America (Mercator projection).

• Support for reading GIS ESRI Shapefiles.

• Added ability to split and merge background lines.

• Added ability to convert a background line into a transmission line, substation, or bus for use with GIS data you may read.

• Added specification of a latitude/longitude coordinate with Bus and Substation objects.

New Data and Features

• Ability to specify that a specific AUX file be read at the end of reading any power system case.  This can be used to store default options you'd like applied to all cases.

• Increased the number of custom floating point numbers and strings from 3 to 5.  Made the custom floating point numbers double precision.

• Utilize Model Expression inside of an object's custom expression.

• Create a Model Filter which consists of other Model Filters and/or Model Conditions.

• Modified the Line Impedance Calculator to use the long-line model.

• Added ability to retain unlinked injection group elements and interface elements when reading them from an AUX file so that you may better determine what has changed in your case.

• Added storage of the Case Summary Information and the case description to the Auxiliary File format.

• Added ability to scale by owner.

• Add the ability to specify Bus Group Calculated Fields.

• Areas, Substations, and Zones can now be left as empty.  This allows you to create them first as empty and then assign their contents.

• Modified the storage and setting of the "metered end" of a transmission branch.  Previously when looking at this value in a case information display it would only appear for area-to-area tie-lines.  This has been changed so that the value will always appear, but it will be shown as grayed out unless it is either an area or zone tie-line.

•  Added a memo tab to most of the object dialogs in Simulator.  These memos can be used throughout to document your case in greater detail.

New Interface Dialogs

• Modified the Injection Group and Interface Case Information displays so you could more easily see what the elements of the aggregations are.

• Greatly enhanced the auto-insert injection groups method so that they may generated by Area, Zone, Super Area, Owners, or a selection.

• Added a tool to generate a list of branches which if taken out-of-service will split your system into islands.  Tool will also give you a list of buses that are islanded by this action.

• Two new case information displays have been added which show a list of all area-area tie-lines and all zone-zone tie-lines in an entire case.

• Added option right-mouse button local menu option on the interfaces case information displays for automatically creating reverse-direction interfaces from the selected interfaces.

Power Flow Modifications: Enhancement of Simulator’s engineering analysis algorithms provide even greater flexibility and robustness.

• Added the ability to treat continuous shunts as PV buses.

• Nomograms can now be defined that exist in all four quadrants.

• Enhanced the angle-smoothing routine so that it works on any series of transmission lines which are closed in together.  Previously it would only operate when closing in a single line.

• Added ability to specify the minimum per unit voltage for which constant power loads are allowed.  When a bus voltage drops below this threshold the bus will gradually change into a constant impedance load as it approaches zero per unit voltage.

• Added log messages notifying the user when the impedance of a branch was changed due to the impedance correction tables.

Contingency Analysis Changes

• New ways to visualize and export your contingency results.

• New contingency actions for opening/closing a 3-winding transformer.

• More contingency actions for Injection Groups, DC Lines, and Phase Shifters.

• Added contingency action for specifying the generator or switched shunt setpoint voltage.

• Ability to ramp an injection group up or down using "Merit Order" dispatch.

• Specify whether and how a generator’s MW output responds in the post-contingency solution.

• Modified the use of Model Criteria used in conjunction with contingency blocks.  Simulator will now perform an AND if a model criteria is specified at bother contingency block level and the individual actions inside the block.

• Modified the Combined Tables in Contingency analysis so that it also included columns for Contingency Owner, Area, and Zone when they are shown in the Contingency Violation and Contingency Definition Tables.

• Added a new SUBDATA section "CTGElementAppend" to the object types Contingency, CTGElementBlock, GlobalContingencyActions, and PostPowerFlowActions. Actions inside these sections will be appended to a definition instead of replacing the actions presently specified.

ATC Modifications

• Added ability to filter based on PTDF value separately from the OTDF.

• Increased the Maximum number of scenarios for each object type to 1024.

PVQV Modifications

• Completely updated the monitoring used in the QV Curve Tool  to allow monitoring throughout the entire system instead of only the terminal bus.  This monitoring is the same as the PV tool now.

• Added QV-specific solution options.

• Modified the PV Curve tool to optionally use merit-order based ramping of the generation or load in an injection group.

• Added ability to track more quantities in the PV and QV tools.

OPF and SCOPF Enhancements

• Greatly enhanced the speed of the linear program solution on large power system cases. 

• Added the ability to dispatch two-terminal DC transmission lines in the OPF and SCOPF algorithms.

• Great improvement of the handling of phase-shifting transformers inside the DC optimal power flow.  A better coordination of the phase-shifters can improve or help insure convergence.

• Great improvement of the dispatch of Area-To-Area MW Transaction Controls to better handle situations where they conflict with one another.

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For a list of what was new in previous version of Simulator, see the links below.

What's New in Simulator 10.0
What's New in Simulator 9.0
What's New in Simulator 8.0
What's New in Simulator 7.0
What's New in Simulator 6.0