Sankey Network Diagrams to Depict Bulk Power Transactions for Operator Situational Awareness

It is not always easy to apprehend the prevailing disposition of power flows through an electrical network. Typically, power system one line diagrams are drawn in a pseudo geographic way. This depiction may obscure where the bulk power flows or the corridors of coherent flow are for a particular operational snapshot. For instance, there could be two electrical regions exchanging large flows of power, yet a geographic layout could obscure this. Bulk power flows are of interest as they are intimately connected with a systems operational security. In this paper a new technique is proposed to more meaningfully portray the coherent flows of active power through a transmission system, based on the Sankey diagram. Furthermore, relying on the Line Outage Distribution Factors, a novel line-oriented clustering methodology is applied to the diagram. This novel clustering provides useful insights regarding the possible contingencies within the grid and the likely post-outage power flow conditions.