A generic power flow formulation for flexible modeling and fast solving for large-scale unbalanced networks.

• General method for power flow solutions of any electrical system. • This method requires only one symbolic factorization. • The numerical performance of the proposed method are compared with the same of popular methods. • Demonstrating the efficiency of proposed method with IEEE-8500 node test system. • Developing a new three-phase model for the synchronous generator by utilization of the GFMA formulation. This paper proposes a new three-phase power flow formulation for fast solving and systematic modeling based on generic formulation and modular approach. In this method, each component of the system is modeled independently as a subsystem while extra-equations are added to establish the connection between components. The augmented system equations are solved using Newton-like method and KLU sparse matrix solver. The mismatch equations are formulated with dynamic parameters to avoid the repetitive symbolic factorizations required after each change in nonzero pattern of the Jacobian matrix. Compared to conventional solution methods, the proposed solution is faster and offers greater modeling flexibility, which makes it more efficient for simulating complex and large-scale networks. The IEEE standard 34-bus and 8500-bus are used as test systems to evaluate the numerical performance, the convergence characteristics, and the accuracy of the results. The comparison with the traditional power flow methods shows significant reduction of resolution time without compromising on solution accuracy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]