Genetic algorithm for the identification of the equivalent interconnected European power grid

Currently, European national power systems are facing operational challenges due to an increasingly intermittent supply of electricity given by the growing penetration of renewable plants and the current energy price crisis. As a consequence, cross-border cooperations are becoming increasingly important. For this cooperation to be implemented, it is necessary to conduct continent-wide techno-economic analyses of cross-border electricity flows. Much research has looked at specific parts of the European continent, while the continent as a whole has rarely been studied. In this paper, an equivalent model of the European interconnected power grid (EIPG) is implemented by considering each country as a bidding zone, with AC and DC high voltage transmission lines (HVAC and HVDC) as interconnections among them. To realize this grid topology, the reactances of the HVAC lines need to be known, which to the authors’ knowledge are not publicly available. Therefore, an optimisation algorithm, the genetic algorithm (GA), is applied to evaluate the reactance values of the implemented HVAC lines. The equations of DC power flow (DCPF) are the equations on which the algorithm is based. To validate this approach, the simulated cross-border active power flows are compared with those of historical data (publicly available): small deviations and errors are found. Simulations are carried out through MATLAB© and PowerWorld simulator© softwares.