pandapower: Tools for Automated Grid Planning

The variety of tasks and the scope of tasks in grid planning have increased considerably in recent years. Due to the energy transition, new regulations, changing subsidy conditions for renewable generation or the development of storage systems and sector coupling (electricity / heat, electricity / mobility, ...), the uncertainties regarding extend as well as time horizon of grid expansion demands are increasing. In addition, new assets such as MV/NV-transformers with OLTC or new requirements (e.g. charging stations for e-mobility) enlarge the solution space and increase complexity. Therefore, in the future increasingly extensive grid planning tasks must be processed or existing grid plans more often adapted and revised. This increases the quantity in grid planning. At the same time, quality requirements are also increasing in order to fulfill the obligations to demonstrate the necessity of grid expansion measures for regulatory reasons and also to still allow for an efficient and cost-effective grid planning process within the company.

pandapower is a software system to support power system planning staff to meet these increasing demands for quantity and quality. pandapower enables (partially) automated creation, calculation and evaluation of many different solution variants in grid planning. In addition, for each solution variant, several scenarios can be calculated automatically, which differ, for example, in the penetration level of renewable generators to identify particularly robust results or grid expansion paths. This enables a higher "throughput" in the grid planning process with simultaneously achieving more robust results in higher quality. pandapower can be applied in complex grid studies as well as in the usual planning process using specific modules and interfaces for integration in in the existing planning environment (tools, data, ...).

Automated calculation for a variety of alternative smart grid technologies and / or alternative grid planning principles for many real grids

• to generally investigate and evaluate the suitability of different technologies or alternative grid planning principles for different grid areas
• to identify simple criteria for the identification of grid areas where the use of certain technologies or alternative grid planning principles is promising

A large number of studies for grid operators (including Bayernwerk Netz GmbH, Netze BW GmbH, or Romande Energie SA) have already been carried out with pandapower on various tasks, e.g. the use of tap changer transformers, reactive power control methods or the use of meshing.