Novel Branch Centrality Measures for Electrical Power Systems Considering Both Load-serving and Circulating Currents

Recent work on transmission usage charging has offered compelling new perspectives on how current flows in electrical power systems. One new insight is that a certain component of branch current flows solely to serve loads in the system, whereas another component arises because of voltage mismatches between generator buses. These circulating currents affect active power losses and branch congestion, and thus may be of renewed interest to system operators. This paper presents novel power system visualizations which better show the separate load-serving and circulating aspects of a network. A key insight that emerges is the dual role of the branches in a system: they carry both load serving and circulating currents, in heterogeneous proportions. This perspective permits new branch centrality metrics to be proposed, which separately gauge a branch's role in serving these distinct functions.