A Novel Contingency Analysis Toolbox Developed by the Python API of Powerfactory

Abstract

An essential aspect of network expansion planning is conducting contingency analysis to evaluate critical system parameters and reliability indices. While various commercial tools exist for network studies, they often lack flexibility in selecting inputs, outputs, and specific operational strategies for power networks. This paper introduces a toolbox developed using the Python API of PowerFactory for N-1 contingency analysis, offering extensive flexibility not provided by the existing commercial tools. The other important feature of the toolbox is the ability to optimize network reconfiguration and power restoration. The toolbox's performance is tested on a real-world bulk distribution network. The results showed the flexibility in generating diverse outputs, the ability to consider different operational strategies while confronting contingencies, and time and resource-saving due to task automation. © 2025 IEEE.