Usefulness of DC power flow for active power flow analysis

In recent days almost every study concerning the analyses of power systems for market related purposes uses DC power flow. DC power flow is a simplification of a full power flow looking only at active power flows. Aspects as voltage support and reactive power management are not considered. However, such simplifications cannot always be justified and might sometimes be unrealistic. In this paper authors analyze the assumptions of DC power flow, and make an attempt at quantifying these using indexes. Among other, the paper answers the question of how low the X/R ratio of line parameters can be, and what is the maximal deviation from the perfect flat voltage which still allows DC power flow to be acceptably accurate.