This document introduces the Dynamic Contingency Analysis Tool (DCAT) software package developed by the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory and serves as a guide for using this package to conduct cascading failure simulations. Additionally, the parallel processing module of the DCAT tool, which runs based on the “MPjobs” package developed by the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, is also introduced. Detailed instructions on how to use this module on multi-core Windows workstations or servers are also provided. Full explanation of the DCAT methodology is available in the Phase 1 report [1].
Section 1.0 lists the system requirements for running the DCAT tool. Sections 2.0, 3.0 and 4.0 describe how to use the DCAT package, as well as run the parallel processing of the DCAT process: section 2.0 introduces the key functions of different modules or subroutines, and the relationships among them; section 3.0 describes how to use the DCAT package to run different simulations; and section 4.0 shows how to use the “MPjobs” package to run parallel processing of the DCAT process.
The detailed introduction of the DCAT package is provided in sections 5.0 and 6.0. Section 5.0 introduces in detail the different modules in the DCAT package, and section 6.0 gives a detailed introduction to the module “MainDACT.py”, which is the main module to simulate the potential cascading events in a given contingency.
Revised: March 29, 2017 |
Published: January 31, 2017