A component based approach to power system applications development

This paper addresses issues of reusability of
component models. Once a component model is designed,
implemented and tested, it should be possible to use it as
many times as necessary for a variety of purposes. The
main idea of this paper is to introduce a new way for building
flexible power system applications. In order to obtain
code reusability a "general" non-linear equation handler
and solver is implemented. The general-purpose solver does
not need to know in advance what kind of problem is going
to be solved. Instead, the solver is based on symbolic model
handling and evaluation. In order to use the model, each
specific application of interest has a converter that transforms
input data to the realm of the general purpose solver.
Both the application-specific converter and the general
purpose equation handler and solver are designed as components.
Thus, there is no need to change, or to recode the
solver each time when new specific problem of interest
arises. It is only necessary to create a new "converter."
The result is that the complete development process is less
error prone. In addition to describing code reusability, this
paper also presents a unique way of collecting input data
and model descriptions that make it possible to reuse symbolic
models in an effective manner.