Added Graphical_load_flow.m file

[PowerAntonio]

Added the Graphical_load_flow.m file for discussion on the functionality for the graphical representation of the solution of power flow.

[rdzman]

Thanks, Antonio. This looks like it could be a nice useful tool and, after looking at it a bit, it seems very similar in intent to plot_mpc(), which is already included in MATPOWER Extras found in the extras directory.

Would you mind having a look at plot_mpc() to identify what the differences are and where your code would be adding features that are not included in plot_mpc()?

From the point of view of the user community, it seems it would make the most sense to stick with a single function and make that as fully featured as possible, as opposed to having separate, but similar, functions.

One of the main drawbacks of both Graphical_load_flow() and the current plot_mpc() is the fact that neither are compatible with GNU Octave, so they only work on MATLAB. I would love your thoughts on making it work with Octave.

A few more comments/suggestions on Graphical_load_flow():

• I like the idea of color coding the flows.
• I get errors with many systems:
  • E.g. case30 has a line with 0 flow resulting in a zero LineWidth.
  • case39, case57, etc. give "Index exceeds the number of array elements error" (using bus number as row index to gen matrix)
  • case300 gives error "'NodeLabel' value must be a scalar or a vector of length 9533."
• I'm not sure if any of the errors are related to this, but it is important to make sure it handles non-consecutive bus numbers (e.g. case300).
• It is always a good idea to use the constants pre-defined in idx_bus, idx_brch and idx_gen rather than hard-coded column numbers to access the bus, branch, gen matrices.
• Putting a hold off at the end would prevent accidentally plotting on top of it.

[PowerAntonio]

Thanks, Ray,
I'll give a look at the plot_mpc function and check the differences.

[abhyshr]

This looks like a very nice feature indeed. Another resource you may want to look at is STAC.

While this feature may work nicely for small networks, you may want to filter out information for large networks. I've faced this problem because there is just too much information making the plot cluttered for large networks. Perhaps, the function could take in additional filter arguments. For example, it could be what voltage levels to display (EHV, HV, MV, LV, ALL).

[rdzman]

@PowerAntonio, just wondering if you ever got a chance to consider my comments, or has this PR been abandoned?

[PowerAntonio]

@PowerAntonio, just wondering if you ever got a chance to consider my comments, or has this PR been abandoned?

Thank you for your message, Ray. I wish I did, but in that period Covid started to hugely affect my work and research. Coping with its consequences was a slow process, however now I can get back to this project and improve it. I will start with comparing it to plot_mpc() and see how additional features can be implemented in it!