Obviously, the best, most effective way to assure the safety of cars on the nation's roads is to have traffic police check them, one by one. But, how can that be done with the large number of cars running around?

This apparently impossible mission on the road turns out to be an easy task when checking terminals in an electricity grid, with a patented technology - a power flow sub-grid parallel computing method.

This remarkable electric power industry achievement was developed solely by a China Electric Power Research Institute team, in affiliation with the State Grid.

"The power flow computation can be widely applied to many areas of industry," explained Tian Fang, deputy director of the institute's power system department.

In the field of electricity, it refers specifically to the analysis and calculation of a power system's operational status."

When asked to comment further, Tian said that a power system's stability and reliability could be improved by locating problems from the beginning, through this advanced computing method.

"It can also perform real- or faster-than-real-time simulations of a power system, which can be very helpful in using new equipment, anticipating accidents, and getting warnings online."

The research team, led by Zhou Xiaoxin of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, began experiments in this in 2001 and completed them about a year and a half later.

"One of the obstacles was figuring how to integrate a parallel algorithm with power flow computations for a higher calculation rate," Tian said.

"We devoted all our efforts to overcoming this technical difficulty and were thinking up solutions even in our dreams."

The results were beyond their dreams. The technology won Zhou and his team a China Patent Award gold medal in 2010.

In addition, by using the technology, the team came up with another remarkable find in 2004 - a world-class advanced digital power system simulator (ADPSS).

"This is the world's largest simulator of its kind," Tian said proudly.

"It can be applied to various simulation research experiments on a large alternating current and direct current (AC-DC) electric mechanism, using 10,000 nodes by connecting 1,000 generators."

The ADPSS and related software have brought the institute considerable economic benefits.

Sales have reached more than 60 million yuan ($9.1 million), and profits have amounted to more than 15 million yuan, over the 2005-2009 period.

The simulator has also played an important role in raising intelligent power system design standards. It also increased the disaster defense capabilities of a power system to maintain continuous, stable operations, he said.

China Daily

(China Daily 01/05/2011 page17)