3816
5, SEPTEMBER 2016
The Holomorphic Embedding Method
Applied to the Power-Flow Problem
Shruti Rao, Student Member, IEEE, Yang Feng, Member, IEEE, Daniel J. Tylavsky, Senior Member, IEEE, and
Muthu Kumar Subramanian, Member, IEEE
Abstract—The Holomorphic Embedding Load-Flow Method
(HELM) solves the power-flow problem to obtain the bus volt-
ages as rational approximants, that is, a ratio of complex-valued
polynomials of the embedding parameter. The proof of its claims
(namely that: 1) it is guaranteed to find a solution if it exists; 2) it
is guaranteed to find only a high-voltage (operable) solution; and
3) that it unequivocally signals if no solution exists) are rooted
in complex analysis and the theory developed by Antonio Trias
and Herbert Stahl. HELM is one variant of the holomorphic
embedding method (HEM) for solving nonlinear equations, the
details of which may differ from those available in its published
patents. In this paper we show that the HEM represents a distinct
class of nonlinear equation solvers that are recursive, rather than
iterative. As such, for any given problem, there are an infinite
number of HEM formulations, each with different numerical
properties and precision demands. The objective of this paper
is to provide an intuitive understanding of HEM and apply one
variant to the power-flow problem. We introduce one possible PV
bus model compatible with the HEM and examine some features
of different holomorphic embeddings, giving step-by-step details
of model building, germ calculation, and the recursive algorithm.
Index Terms—Analytic continuation, germ, holomorphic em-
bedding, holomorphic series method, power-flow.
I. INTRODUCTION
T HE power-flow (PF) problem statement and algorithms
used to solve it and its kin (e.g., the optimal power flow,
dynamic simulations, state estimation) are of primal impor-
tance to the power industry. The objective of the traditional
PF problem is to find the static operating point of a balanced
three-phase power system. Improving the reliability of the
nonlinear solvers used on this problem has been a topic of
research for decades. While there exist various approaches
for solving the PF problem, the general-purpose iterative
techniques [1]–[5], i.e., Gauss-Seidel (GS), Newton-Raphson
(NR), Fast Decoupled Load Flow (FDLF) and many of their
variants, are well-known and are being used with great success.
Manuscript received April 21, 2015; revised August 18, 2015, October 26,
2015; accepted November 22, 2015. Date of publication December 10, 2015;
date of current version August 17, 2016. Paper no. TPWRS-00550-2015.
S. Rao and D. J. Tylavsky are with the School of Electrical Computer and En-
ergy Engineering in Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ 85287 USA (e-mail:
srao12/tylavsky@asu.edu).
Y. Feng is with Siemens, PTI, Houston, TX 77041 USA (e-mail:
yang-feng@siemens.com).
M. Kumar Subramanian is with Alstom Grid, Redmond, WA 98052 USA
(e-mail: muthu-kumar.subramanian@alstom.com).
Color versions of one or more of the figures in this paper are available online
at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TPWRS.2015.2503423
0885-8950 © 2015 IEEE. Personal use is permitted, but republication/redistribution requires IEEE permission.
See http://www.ieee.org/publications_standards/publications/rights/index.html for more information.
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER SYSTEMS, VOL. 31, NO.
With a reasonable initial estimate of the voltage profile on a
non-distressed system, if the iterative methods converge, they
usually, though not always, converge to the high-voltage (HV)
or operable solution, one of the possibly many solutions to the
equations [6].
In most cases, traditional PF methods converge to the oper-
able solution particularly if the system loading level is not close
to its voltage collapse point. The quandary that arises when they
do not converge or converge to a non-operable solution is: Why?
Is the system not operable as modeled? Is the system operable,
but the PF algorithm incapable of finding the solution [7], [8]?
Was the initial estimate of the bus voltage profile poor?
Efforts have been made to analyze and improve the conver-
gence of the iterative process [9]–[15], yet the convergence is-
sues of the traditional algorithms remain.
A novel non-iterative PF method, known as the Holomorphic
Embedding Load Flow (HELM) method was proposed by Dr.
Antonio Trias in 2012 [28]. One form of the method guaran-
teed to find only an HV/operable PF solution (if it exists) for a
simple two-bus system was proposed and shown theoretically
to have the following properties: it is guaranteed to find a so-
lution if it exists, it will find only the operable solution and
will unequivocally signal if no solution exists through oscilla-
tions in the rational approximation of the voltage power series
[16]. This approach was generalized for the multi-bus problem
in [17] but with no discrete or controlled-element models (e.g.,
tap-changers, SVC's, etc.), PV/generator bus model or bus-type
switching algorithm. Proving that the generalized form without
discretely-controlled elements is also guaranteed to find a so-
lution if it exists and that the solution found is an HV solution
involves using the principle of analytic continuation and is sub-
ject to the conditions of Stahl's theorem [19].
In this paper our aim is to show that the HEM represents a
new class of nonlinear equation solvers and show that it may be
viewed as a curve fitting technique where the algebraic (poly-
nomial) nature of the problem is exploited and rational-approx-
imant techniques are used for computing the solution. We then
apply the HEM to the PF problem (and assuming the require-
ments of Stahl's theorem apply) show that it is guaranteed to
find the operable solution, if it exists—provided Hopf bifurca-
tions are absent allowing an operable stable solution to exist. We
also show that there are an infinite number of ways of applying
this method.
One PQ-bus HEM model was developed in [17]. Although a
PV-bus model has been published for HEM [18], the formula-
tion requires a modification in order to be fully compatible with
the HEM method.
RAO et al.: HOLOMORPHIC EMBEDDING METHOD APPLIED TO THE POWER-FLOW PROBLEM
The paper is organized as follows: Section II presents back-
ground on holomorphic functions and shows how an explicit
holomorphic function can be represented by a Maclaurin
series. Discussed in Section III is the calculation of a Padé
approximant and its critical property that it is the maximal
analytic continuation of the power series. In Sections IV and
V, starting from a simple two-bus case, the fundamentals of
the HEM are introduced as they apply to the PF problem. The
multi-bus HEM-compatible PQ and PV models are discussed
in Sections VI–VII. Section VIII discusses the implementation
of discrete controls for the HEM. Section IX presents some
numerical results to compare the NR and the HEM. Finally, the
conclusions are presented in Section X.
II. EXPLICIT FUNCTION AND MACLAURIN SERIES
A. Holomorphic Functions
A holomorphic function is a complex-valued analytic func-
tion, which has the property that it is infinitely complex dif-
ferentiable around every point within its domain. One property
of holomorphic functions important for the purpose here is that
they can be represented by their Taylor series in a neighborhood
of each point in their domain [20].
B. Maclaurin Series and Radius of Convergence
A Maclaurin series of a holomorphic function represents
the function at a point only if that point falls within its radius
of convergence [34]. For example, the explicit real-valued
closed-form analytic function given in (1) can be written as the
Maclaurin series of , also given in (1).
(1)
From inspection of the series coefficients, it is obvious that
the power series of the explicit function diverges at , while
the value of the closed-form of the function can be easily calcu-
lated to be 1.0 when . (Note that the radicand of the func-
tion has zeroes (essential singularities, which are branch points
of the function along the real line) located at
defining its radius of convergence (ROC) to
be less than (the magnitude of distance of the smallest singu-
larity from the origin) , which is less than 1.0; thus
the power series is non-convergent at [20].) A limited
ROC problem will continue to plague us once we tackle the im-
plicit-function (i.e., PF) problem; hence we need to find a way to
‘transform’ the power series such that non-convergence outside
the ROC but within the domain of the function can be overcome.
Padé approximants are used to advantage here.
A few observations regarding (1) give insight into the HEM
as applied to the PF problem. First, (1) is the real part of the com-
plex HV solution at the PQ bus of a two-bus ac power system
(with line impedance p.u. and complex power injection
at the PQ bus of MVA p.u.), where is the real-power
multiplicative scaling factor. Second, is undefined (does
not exist and, therefore, is non-analytic) over the field of real
numbers outside of its domain, , .
3817
Third, the power series expansion shown in (1) is not unique.
By selecting a different point about which to expand the closed
form in (1), an infinite number of Taylor series expansions are
possible. Finally, insight into some aspects of the HEM can be
gained if the series in (1) is viewed as a polynomial curve fitting
of the closed-form function.
III. PADÉ APPROXIMANTS AND ANALYTIC CONTINUATION
Analytic continuation in complex analysis is a means of ex-
tending the domain of a holomorphic function [20]. Typically,
and as it is used here, analytic continuation is used to evaluate
an infinite series outside of its ROC but within the function's
domain. While there are many methods for performing analytic
continuation, Padé approximants [22] are widely used. (While
numerical continuation is applied in continuation power flow
method [23] as well as in homotopy methods applied to PF-re-
lated problems, the concept of analytic continuation has nothing
in common with numerical continuation.)
A Padé approximant is a rational-function (ratio of two poly-
nomials) approximation to a power series that can yield a more
accurate approximation to the defining function than the trun-
cated series of the same length. A common Padé approximant
notation to indicate that the degree of the numerator polyno-
mial is and the degree of the denominator polynomial is ,
is , given in (2).
(2)
The so-called direct or matrix method for finding the rational
approximant [21] is straight forward and involves solving a
dense set of linear equations of dimension and then a for-
ward substitution through a dense lower triangular matrix of di-
mension . Though and can be selected arbitrarily, in
general the diagonal or near-diagonal Padé approx-
imant ( small) gives the most accurate approximate
given a fixed value of [19], [22]. There exist many other
algorithms to calculate the Padé approximant, e.g., the Visko-
vatov method (continued fraction), Wynn's epsilon algorithm,
etc. [22]. The numerical properties and performance of these
methods vary and, in general, yield a different approximant [22].
In general, no ‘best’ algorithm can be found for all applications.
Following on with the example in (1), if the first 9 terms of
the series are used to construct the diagonal , the Padé
approximant of the power series is given by (3).
(3)
The value of , in (3), at , is 1.0000 (rounded to
four decimal places) which is a good approximation to the value
of the closed-form function in (1). Observe that the approximant
yielded a value with acceptable accuracy when the series itself
diverged. Further, , which was generated using the first
9 terms in the series, is more accurate than the series of (1)
truncated to 9 terms as shown in Fig. 1.
Because (1) is the real part of the complex voltage at the PQ
bus of a two-bus ac power system, the maximum power transfer
theorem dictates the domain of [34]. If the Padé approxi-
mant is evaluated outside of the functions domain, the value of
3818
Fig. 1. Plot of in closed form, as a [4/4] Padé approximant, and as a
truncated power series.
Fig. 2. Plot of as a function of .
the approximant oscillates. Plotted in Fig. 2 is the value of the
diagonal Padé approximant of at , starting from a
Padé approximant. It can be shown theoretically that
oscillations occur for this single equation approximant and that
the period of the oscillation is related to the amount by which
the point of interest is beyond the domain of the function [16].
Thus oscillations in the value of the Padé approximant can be
used to determine when a point of interest (load) is outside of
the functions domain (beyond the voltage collapse/bifurcation
point) for this two-bus ac PF problem.
Can anything be said about the range over which a Padé ap-
proximant represents a complex-valued series in general?, Pro-
vided certain conditions apply to the function, Stahl's theory
([24], [25]), which originated from the work of Nuttal [26],
proves that the sequence of the near-diagonal Padé approxi-
mants is the maximal analytic continuation for the power series.
In other words, the Padé approximant provides an accurate ap-
proximation (in general, the higher the order the approximant,
the greater the accuracy) of the function over the maximal re-
gion, which is the function's domain; non-convergence of the se-
quence of diagonal or near-diagonal Padé approximant indicates
that the point of interest is outside of the maximal domain of
analytical continuation of the single-valued function [24], [25].
For the PF problem, the voltage function's domain is any oper-
ating point short of the voltage-collapse point.
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER SYSTEMS, VOL. 31, NO. 5, SEPTEMBER 2016
Fig. 3. Two-bus system diagram.
The implication of this to the ac HEM PF formulation, which
will be addressed in the next section, is that if a solution exists,
then the properly embedded function has a single-valued ana-
lytical continuation (provided by the sequence of near diagonal
Padé approximants) that is maximal, and therefore the solution
is reached by the procedure. On the contrary, if no solution ex-
ists, the point cannot belong to the maximal domain of an-
alytical continuation and the Padé sequences will not converge.
In practice, non-convergence of the series is evidenced by the
oscillatory behavior of the Padé approximant.
There may be more than one solution to a nonlinear problem.
In the case of the two bus problem PF problem, how can we
guarantee that the HV solution is found rather than the low-
voltage (LV) solution? This question is readdressed for the im-
plicit and multi-bus cases later since that answer is different. For
the example given by (1), since the closed form corresponds to
the HV solution of the two bus system, the series created using
the classical Maclaurin expansion techniques must yield the HV
solution. If we had negated the radical in (1), the resultant equa-
tion would be the LV closed-form solution. The Maclaurin se-
ries derived using the LV form would change and the corre-
sponding Padé approximant would yield the LV solution within
the functions domain.
IV. IMPLICIT FUNCTION
While obtaining the power series coefficients for an explicit
function is straightforward, implicit functions/equations require
somewhat more effort. The classical PF problem is a set of im-
plicit equations. In order to describe how the HEM is applied to
an implicit function, a simple two-bus system with a slack bus
and a PQ bus is considered as shown in Fig. 3.
In Fig. 3 is the line impedance, is the complex power
injection at the PQ bus (and hence will be negative for real-
power loads), is the slack bus voltage and is the PQ bus
voltage.
By applying Kirchhoff's current law at the PQ bus, we obtain
(4)
where is the current injection into the PQ bus. The relation
between and is given by,
(5)
Equations (4) and (5) can be combined to obtain the power
balance equation (PBE),
(6)
Equation (6), which defines implicitly, is not holomorphic
in its given form, as the Cauchy-Riemann conditions are not
RAO et al.: HOLOMORPHIC EMBEDDING METHOD APPLIED TO THE POWER-FLOW PROBLEM 3819

satisfied due to the existence of a complex conjugate operator.
The technique of holomorphic embedding (HE) can be applied
to make the function holomorphic by embedding (writing as a
different function with additional variable(s)) (6) with the com-
plex-valued parameter to obtain
Note that the product of two power series is the convolution
of their coefficients. By equating the coefficients of the same
powers of on both sides of (11), a recursive relation between
and is obtained as given in (12).

(7)

The notation denotes that the voltage in the embedded

form is now a holomorphic function of the parameter as de-
fined by (7) and a plot of versus real-valued is the tra-
ditional PV plot produced by a continuation power flow. The
solution at represents the no-load, no-generation case
and is called the germ. Observe that the original PBE is recov- ..
ered at . .
Since is holomorphic, it can be represented as a
Maclaurin series with as the expansion parameter as given
(12)
in (8), where the coefficients are (yet to be determined)
complex numbers.
Thus the two-bus HE PBE can be written in terms of power
series coefficients.

(13)

At , (13) reduces to (14) which yields the so-called

germ of the power series. The germ corresponds to a network
(8) with no load and hence the voltage at the PQ bus is equal to the
slack bus voltage, provided there exists no shunt element in the
Note that in (7) is embedded with instead of to retain
system. (Shunt elements will be addressed later.)
the holomorphicity, as evidenced by (8)(d). If the function is
embedded with variable instead, holomorphicity is lost, as (14)
the presence of the conjugate operator applied to the variable
(8)(c) violates Weitinger's rule [27] for holomorphicity, and the By equating the coefficients of on both sides
subsequent development is invalid. of (13), the general expression for calculating the power series
If we substitute this unknown voltage series given in coefficients for can be obtained as:
(8)(a) into (7), the following equation results:
(15)

Note that in (15) depends only on lower indexed values

(9) of defined by (12), which in turn depends on values of
with indices smaller than . So (12) along with (15) form a re-
Since we want equality (9) to hold for any value of , the currence relation that can be used to solve for the power series
coefficients of respective powers of on both sides of (9) must coefficients once the germ is found using (14). After the series
be equal. In order to find the series coefficients that satisfy (9), is generated, the voltage solution can be obtained by evaluating
the inverse of the voltage power series on the RHS has to be the voltage power series at . However, if the ROC of the
represented as a power series. To achieve this, let the inverse voltage series is less than 1.0, the power series will not converge.
of the voltage function , be represented by another power Hence, a Padé approximant (the maximal analytic continuation)
series, , defined by is used, both to represent the power series within its ROC to an
where the relationship between and is given in accuracy usually greater than the truncated series and to repre-
(10). sent the series beyond its radius of convergence as described in
Section III.
(10)
V. OBSERVATIONS ABOUT THE SCALAR HEM
In order to calculate the coefficients of the inverse power se- Since convergence of the series is guaranteed if a solution
ries, both sides of (10) are multiplied by . exists, how can we guarantee that the solution found is the op-
erable one? This requires selecting the embedding such that the
germ corresponds to the HV no-load solution, or equivalently,
the no-load point on the upper branch of the dual-valued PV
(11) curve. Conceptually, if the series expansion is viewed as a curve
3820 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER SYSTEMS, VOL. 31, NO. 5, SEPTEMBER 2016

fitting problem, it is not surprising that if the initial point of the At , the original PBE's (17), are recovered from the
curve is the no-load point on the top branch of the PV curve, the embedded system of equations and the HV solution can be re-
fitted series will correspond to that branch and therefore con- trieved. The defining equation for a slack bus is
verge to the HV solution. ( slack) where is the specified voltage magnitude at bus
There are an infinite number of ways to embed a function . It will be shown that it is convenient (though not necessary)
and each formulation will have different numerical properties. to use the following model for the slack bus so that at the
Thus the level of precision obtained particularly near the saddle- slack bus voltage is 1.0 and at the slack bus voltage is
node bifurcation point, depends significantly on the embedding . Since the solution obtained is only valid at , the
chosen. As a trivial example, (6) could be embedded as in (16) slack bus voltage value for , will affect the voltage
and still reach the HV solution. series derived, but will not affect the solution.

(16) (20)

In (18), since both the shunt elements included on the RHS

This voltage function is different from that in (7), so the series and the loads are multiplied by , the solution of (18) at
generated would be different and the algorithm would have dif- corresponds to a network with no load and no shunt element;
ferent numerical properties, but the values of (7) and (16) will hence all voltages are identical to the slack bus voltage at
agree at , since the germ for the equations is the same (the HV germ).
and the original PBE's are recovered only at Viewed another way, the linear system of equations at
for both equations. are given in (21).
Just as Newton-type and Gauss-Seidel-type methods repre-
sent different classes of solvers, the HEM represents a class of
solvers for nonlinear equations. Some insight into this class of
solvers is gained if the HEM method is viewed as a curve fit-
(21)
ting approach, i.e., in the case of the PF problem, constructing a
power series approximation to a PV curve, along with a means
These can be solved to obtain the germ. Doing this one finds
of violating the series' ROC restriction by approximating the se-
that all the bus voltages are equal to
ries polynomial as a rational function.
since the entries of each row of the matrix sum up to
zero and the slack bus voltage is .
VI. MULTI-BUS HE PQ MODEL As the embedded PBE's are holomorphic, the bus voltages
The derivation for a simple two-bus case can be extended to can be represented as a power series in , that is and
a general -bus system consisting of a slack bus, called using the same strategy as described in Section IV. Sub-
slack, and a set of PQ buses. The PBE for bus is given stituting the and series given by (8), into (18)
by, yields:

(17)

where, is the element of the bus admittance matrix,

and , and are the complex power injection and voltage at (22)
bus , respectively. There is an infinity of ways of embedding
(17) while ensuring that the equations are holomorphic and that Substituting (10) into (22):
the HV solution is obtained. The authors have investigated many
methods and have found pros and cons to each. One embedding
is to move the shunt elements in (17) to the RHS and then embed
the equation with a complex-valued embedding parameter as
follows:
(23)

Similar to the simple two-bus case, by equating the coeffi-

cients of on both sides of (23), a recurrence relation
(18) can be developed to solve for the power series coefficients, not
in a scalar but in a matrix form. The th equation in the -equa-
where corresponds to the “series branch” part of the
tion set for calculating the power series coefficients, , for
admittance matrix and corresponds to the shunt part of
is given by:
the admittance matrix, i.e.,

(19) (24)
RAO et al.: HOLOMORPHIC EMBEDDING METHOD APPLIED TO THE POWER-FLOW PROBLEM 3821

The equation set defined by (24) can be used to evaluate the
coefficients of the voltage series for load/PQ buses. In order to
define a similar equation for the slack bus, in terms of its power
series coefficients, a special notation is introduced.
(25)
Using this notation and the slack-bus equation defined in (20),
an expression for the power series coefficients can be written as:
(26)
Note that the bus-voltage constraint in (30) will require one
more degree of freedom in the variables, therefore the reactive
power variable too must be a function of the complex embed-
ding parameter, , namely [29]. It is important to note
that unlike the voltage power series that has complex coeffi-
cients, the reactive power series has only real coefficients. Eval-
uating (30) at yields the original voltage magnitude con-
straint of the generator bus. This constraint ensures that the germ
solution, , is consistent with a flat voltage profile of .
One could also write the constraint as,
(31)

By knowing the and series up to coefficients, however, at , the magnitude of the bus voltage will be
the th coefficient of the voltage power series can be calculated , resulting in no-load line flows. To find the germ then re-
using (24) by solving a sparse linear matrix equation. The coef- quires solving (29) at , which is the classic nonlinear
ficients of the series up to the th coefficient can be obtained PF problem. This problem can be solved using the HEM and
from the voltage series up to the th coefficient from (12). Thus there are times when structuring the germ problem as a non-
linear problem is advantageous.
by evaluating the appropriate germ, solution at , the entire
Equations (29) and (30) together represent the HE formula-
voltage power series up to the desired number of terms can be
tion for the generator bus model used here.
constructed from (24) and (12) with the recursive process. For a problem with buses, the HE system of equations
Once the power series is obtained, the sequence of near-di- that describe the different bus types are given by (18), (20), (29)
agonal Padé approximants explained in Section III are used to and (30). By solving the embedded equations representing the
guarantee convergence of the series for operating points short generator bus, along with the HE formulation of the load bus
of the voltage collapse point [24], [25]. All of the Padé approx- and slack bus at , the germ can be obtained. At , the
imants may be calculated in parallel speeding the process. system of equations listed above becomes:
In summary the solution process is a four step process:
1. Calculate the germ.
2. Calculate from and
using (12).
3. Calculate from and using (24).
4. Recursively apply steps 2 and 3.

VII. MULTI-BUS HEM PV MODEL AND GENERAL (32)

APPLICATION
If we have set up our constraint equations properly, the germ
For a generator bus, both the voltage magnitude and real should be a flat voltage profile of . Let's check this by as-
power output are known quantities while voltage angle and re- suming this to be the case and checking if all equations in (32)
active power supply/absorption are unknown. are obeyed. Working from the bottom to the top, in (32)(d), the
The traditional defining equations for a PV bus, , are: slack-bus voltage germ is consistent with a value of 1.0. Also,
the generator-voltage magnitude constraint in (32)(c) will also
(27) be met, since the product equals 1.0. The embedded
generator powerbalance constraint (32)(b), however, has a vari-
(28) able on the RHS. Substituting the assumed generator-bus
germ voltage of 1.0 for all buses in (32)(b), the embedded gen-
where denotes the real power injection and the voltage erator bus PBE becomes:
magnitude at bus .
For the -bus system, let denote the set of PV buses.
The complex PBE for a generator bus, , with the reactive
power, , is represented using the following holomorphic
function:
(33)

A reactive-power germ, , equal to 0.0 (from

(33)) is consistent with all bus voltages equal to 1.0 p.u. Fi-
(29) nally, it was remarked earlier that (32) is consistent with a flat
1.0 voltage profile. Hence, is the germ to
with a voltage-magnitude constraint: the embedded system of equations presented in (18), (20), (29)
and (30). It is also the physical solution for the no-load, no-gen-
(30) eration case for a general PF problem when there are no shunts
3822 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER SYSTEMS, VOL. 31, NO. 5, SEPTEMBER 2016

and the generator bus voltages are maintained at 1.0. The cal- In calculating of the th order coefficient of the voltage
culated germ solution, and also represents the con- power series (i.e., ), the th order coefficient of the
stant term (coefficient of term) in the power series, and series appears as an unknown in (37) and in the RHS of
, respectively, for the generator bus model. (36). (Note that the presence of in (37) appears to violate
The number of power flow solutions potentially scales expo- the recursion rules established earlier, that only values
nentially with the number of buses in the system. The embed- with indices less than are needed in evaluating the RHS of
dings given here are such as to provide germs that lead to an HV our matrix equation; however, since , the value of
solution. is irrelevant in (37)).
To calculate the coefficients of the voltage and reactive power Once the germ is obtained, a linear recurrence relationship to
series for a generator bus model, a recurrence relation has to
calculate the power series coefficients has to be developed using
be established similar to the load bus model. The derivation is
(36). Rewriting (36) derived from the PBE's of the generator bus
considerably more involved for a system with both PQ and PV
buses. The details follow. model, with the germ yields.
First let's work with the PV bus model portion given in (29).
Expressing the voltage and reactive power as a power series
gives:
(38)

By moving the unknowns to the LHS of (38), the result

becomes:

(34)

The definition of the inverse series and the calculation of its

coefficients is identical to the load bus model described by the (39)
(10)–(12). Thus (34) becomes:
Equation (39) defines a recurrence relation that is used in cal-
culating the voltage series coefficients and reactive-power se-
ries coefficients. A similar equation needs to be derived from the
voltage magnitude constraint of the generator bus given by (30).
Expressing the voltage function, , as a power series in (30)
yields a self-convolution with a complex conjugate operator:
(35)

Equating the coefficients of and so on up to ,

(40)

Equating the coefficients of powers of on both sides yields

(41), where represents the real part of the voltage power
series' th coefficient from the voltage-magnitude constraint.
The notation , as defined in (25), is used to write a general-
ized expression to evaluate . The calculation of
for an arbitrary value of , can be written from (41) as (42).
..
.

(41)
..
(36) .

In (36), the calculation of the voltage series coefficients,

, involves the convolution of two power series, and
, which can be expanded as:

(37) (42)
RAO et al.: HOLOMORPHIC EMBEDDING METHOD APPLIED TO THE POWER-FLOW PROBLEM 3823

Equations (39) and (42) represent a consistent system of Observe from (41) that the values of for PV buses
equations representing the generator bus model. However, the depend only on values of with indices smaller than .
implementation of a solution procedure for the equations in Therefore, on the LHS of (44), all values of for the PV
their current form is more involved that is perhaps apparent buses are known before the matrix equation is solved. Observe
since the unknowns are real numbers (the imaginary part of that the values on the RHS of (44) are unknowns. To
voltage series coefficients and reactive-power series coeffi- create a linear matrix equation in explicit form, all the known
cients). The objective is to rearrange the equations so that and unknowns need to be moved to the LHS and RHS of (44),
the power series coefficients can be obtained by solving a respectively.
real-valued linear matrix equation. It is achieved by breaking When the matrix equation for the recurrence relation of an
the complex voltage power series coefficients into real and -bus system is written, the coefficients of the LHS ma-
imaginary parts. While this is necessary in order to write trix and RHS vector for the remaining buses have to be altered,
explicit forms of the equations for the generator-bus power to account for moving unknown variables to LHS and known
series coefficients, it becomes inevitable in the implementation variables to RHS. After rearranging, for a PV bus, , the matrix
that the load-bus voltage power series coefficients are also equation fragment (44) becomes (45), shown at the bottom of
broken down into real and imaginary components because the following page. Equation (45) represents the overall matrix
the PV and PQ system of equations are mutually coupled. recurrence representation for system with multiple PV and PQ
Let the entries of the admittance matrix (without shunt ele- buses, with the all the entries written for one generator bus and
ments) be expressed as . The voltage two PQ buses.
series coefficients are broken into real and imaginary parts In summary the solution process is a four step process:
. Thus, the LHS of (36) is alterna- 1. Calculate the germ using (32).
tively expressed for every bus as follows: 2. Calculate from and
using (12).
3. Calculate from (42)
4. Calculate and from and
using (45).
5. Recursively apply steps 2 through 4.

VIII. PV-PQ BUS-TYPE SWITCHING

(43)
Equation (36) for bus is broken into real and imaginary
components and represented as a matrix equation given by (44),
shown at the bottom of the page.
As is well known, there are no elegant methods for performing
generator bus-type switching with traditional power flow
algorithms. If not done carefully, buses can bounce between
being on and off VAR limits and the algorithm may never
converge. Bus type switching is often handled using heuristics

..
.

..
.

..
.

(44)

..
.
3824 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER SYSTEMS, VOL. 31, NO. 5, SEPTEMBER 2016

honed through years of experience. The traditional strategy
for bus-type switching is after some initial iterations, check
and alter bus types on an ad hoc basis. We make no claims to
improving this process and have implemented a rather straight
forward bus-type switching strategy.
Currently, the reactive power limits of the generators are
handled in the power-flow program as follows. Let
represent the minimum and maximum reactive
power limits on a generator at bus , respectively. The germ
followed by a fixed number of terms (say five) of the power
series coefficients are calculated using the algorithm presented.
Any reactive power load at bus is added to the calculated net
reactive power injection at that bus to obtain the net reactive
power generated, . If the reactive power limits are violated
( or ), the bus type is
changed from a PV bus to PQ bus with appropriate limits. For
PV buses on VAr limits, if by reacquiring voltage control the
net reactive power generated is brought within reactive power
limits, then the generator bus model is switched back to a PV
bus model.
After performing bus-type switching checks, the voltage-
magnitude-controlling taps are adjusted using a simple
tap-changing algorithm where the tap adjustment is chosen for
each increment/decrement as the minimum step size available
for the transformer. The PF problem is then re-solved with the
new bus type assignments and new tap positions starting with
the corresponding germ. The authors are currently working on
more elegant and efficient methods for bus type switching and
tap changing that take advantage of the HEM.
IX. NUMERICAL RESULTS
It is important to emphasize that there are various ways of
embedding the power flow problem and each method has its
own numerical advantages and disadvantages. Determining the
most suitable formulation for practical power systems is a work
in progress. This section presents the results for some numerical
tests that are performed on the IEEE 118- and 300-bus systems
and the 6057-bus ERCOT system in order to compare the perfor-
mance of the described HEM with the NR method. The smaller
systems are used to compare the performance of HEM against
NR without having the added complexity of discrete changes
and hence bus-type switching and tap-changing transformers
are not considered for these systems. In order to obtain the cor-
rect bus types, the final bus types obtained from NR are used
for the HEM for these small systems only. However, bus-type
switching and load tap changing controls have been tested on the
ERCOT system. The application MATPOWER was used to ob-
tain the NR method results for the smaller systems while Power-
World was used to obtain the NR results for ERCOT [30], [31].
The HEM involves starting with a fixed number of terms
(say eleven) in the power series and subsequently adding two
terms (a couplet) at a time until the convergence tolerance is
met. There are two steps involved in checking for convergence
for the HEM. The first step involves checking for the change in
the voltage between two successive Padé approximants, where
the Padé approximants are updated after adding a couplet in the
voltage series for all the buses. If the maximum voltage devi-
ation is within the set tolerance (0.01 p,u.), the second conver-
gence criterion is checked, namely whether the PBE mismatches
are within the desired tolerance (0.1 MW/MVAr for real/reac-
tive power). The number of terms are increased until the voltage
deviation and the mismatch tolerances are met.
While it is instructive to compare the number of NR iterations
with the number of terms in the HEM series needed to reach con-
vergence, it is important to recognize that the two are not com-
parable in terms of the computational effort required per NR
iteration/HEM series term. Bus mismatches are required to be
updated for each NR iteration and the computational complexity

.. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. ..
. . . . . . . . .

.. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. ..
. . . . . . . . .

..
. ..
.
(45)
..
.. .
.
RAO et al.: HOLOMORPHIC EMBEDDING METHOD APPLIED TO THE POWER-FLOW PROBLEM
Fig. 4. Highest absolute PBE mismatch versus iteration number.
Fig. 5. Number of iterations versus convergence tolerance.
is identical for each iteration, PV-PQ bus switching notwith-
standing. No bus mismatches are required for the HEM ap-
proach until after the first accuracy test is passed (above) while
the computational complexity of evaluating the RHS of (12),
(42), and (45) grows as the number of terms in the series grows.
These comments notwithstanding, Fig. 4 shows the magni-
tude of the highest absolute PBE mismatch vs. the number of
NR iterations/number of terms in the HEM power series for
the IEEE systems. For this set of experiments only, the PBE
mismatch convergence tolerance is set to be 0.0001 MW in
order to observe how the solution improves with each NR iter-
ation or each additional HE couplet. As expected the maximum
mismatch decreases as the number of terms in the voltage se-
ries increases and as the number of NR iterations increase, al-
though the decrease is not monotonic. While the results show
that the quadratically-converging NR method has a faster con-
vergence rate, the convergence rate of the HEM is greater than
a Gauss-Seidel method (not shown).
Fig. 5 plots the number of iterations/terms needed for the
two algorithms as a function of convergence tolerance. As the
convergence tolerance criterion is made stricter, the number of
HEM terms needed increases more rapidly than the number of
NR iterations.
In the third numerical experiment performed, the loading
level of the system was increased and the number of NR itera-
tions/voltage-series terms needed for convergence was obtained
using MATPOWER for the NR results. A plot of the number of
NR iterations/HEM terms needed as a percentage of the loading
at the voltage collapse (VC) point is shown in Fig. 6, where the
VC point was obtained using the Voltage Security Assessment
3825
Fig. 6. Number of iterations versus loading level of the system.
TABLE I
BASE-LOAD MULTIPLIER AT THE VC POINT PREDICTED BY VSAT,
MATPOWER, AND HEM
Tool (VSAT—an application provided by DSATools [32]). The
convergence tolerance used was 0.1 MW/MVAR for the PBE
mismatch and 1E-4 p.u. for the maximum allowable deviation
in the value of the Padé approximants. The number of terms
needed in the HEM method increases more rapidly than the
number of NR iterations needed as the loading level of the
system increases.
For the 118-bus and the 300-bus systems, the load-scaling
factors by which base-case loads as well as the real generation
of all PV buses are multiplied at the static voltage collapse point
were obtained from VSAT, MATPOWER and HEM [30], [32].
VAR limits were obeyed in this experiment. It was seen that
while VSAT gave the most conservative results, the predictions
made by MATPOWER were 2–3% higher than VSAT while the
predictions of the VC by the HEM lay between the two methods.
Table I presents the load scaling factor obtained from the three
methods corresponding to the VC predictions.
In order to test the HEM on a practical system, the HEM
was applied to 6057-bus ERCOT system (obtained from Energy
Visuals), with a minor reformulation of the equations described
in Section VII to account for phase-shifting transformers.
With the phase shifting model included, the matrix of the
ERCOT system will become unsymmetrical. Therefore the pre-
vious germ (solution of (32)), where and ,
is no longer correct; however this germ can be used if the
matrix is separated into two parts (a symmetrical part and an
unsymmetrical part) and if the unsymmetrical part of the ma-
trix is moved to the RHS of the embedded equations, shown for
the PQ bus model in (46).
(46)
3826 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER SYSTEMS, VOL. 31, NO. 5, SEPTEMBER 2016

where and is the symmetrical and unsym-

metrical part of the matrix, respectively. It is trivial to show
that the PV bus model can be modified accordingly and will
not be presented in detail. Note that the unsymmetrical part of
the matrix is a highly sparse matrix, of which the entries are
non-zero only if two buses are connected by a phase shifting
transformer.
Using a bus-power mismatch convergence tolerance of
0.1 MW, the “Single Solution—Full Newton” option in Power-
World was unable to obtain a solution from a flat start, however
when the option for the flat start was disabled PowerWorld's
NR algorithm was able to find a solution for the base-case load
within the desired tolerance for the given loading condition.
In contrast, the lowest maximum mismatch that was obtained
using HEM on the ERCOT base-case system was 0.7 MW,
which needed 51 terms.
The inability of HEM to find a solution for the ERCOT base- Fig. 7. Mismatch versus number of terms for ERCOT—base-case.
load case may be explained as follows: From the converged
PowerWorld solution, the bus voltages ranged between 0.892
and 1.109 p.u. with 95 buses below 0.95 p.u and two buses
below 0.9 p.u. This shows that the system was very heavily
loaded and close to its voltage collapse point. Fig. 7 shows
the plot of the PBE mismatches (real and reactive power) and
the maximum voltage deviation between successive Padé ap-
proximants for the HEM method. It can be seen that the lowest
PBE mismatch obtained is 0.007 p,u, i,e, 0.7 MW at 51 terms,
after which the HEM mismatches begin oscillating and a solu-
tion within the desired convergence tolerance is not obtained.
This suggests that no solution exists, yet the NR method clearly
finds one. Since the theory of universal convergence of the HEM
method is sound, the conclusion reached is that a solution is not
obtained because insufficient precision (64-bit arithmetic) was
used in the calculations. (We have done some experiments with
Fig. 8. Mismatch versus number of terms for ERCOT—95% loads of
extended precision and have obtain solutions for cases where base-case.
64-bit arithmetic indicated no solution existed.) When the loads
on ERCOT were reduced to 96.5% of the base-case loads, the
TABLE II
desired PBE mismatch tolerance was met with 51 terms in the RATIO OF EXECUTION TIMES OF HEM TO NR
power series as seen from Fig. 8. While the NR method failed
again to solve the ERCOT system at 96.5% of the base-case
load from a flat start; it did find a solution once the flat-start fea-
ture in PowerWorld was disabled. Notice that this behavior is
consistent with that seen in the IEEE systems, where the VC is
predicted to be lower by HEM than NR. Since numerical prop-
erties of HEM are formulation dependent, a different formula-
tion, including a different means of calculating the Padé approx-
imants—perhaps that used in the HELM application—would
perform better but since the HELM formulation is not in the of the minimum execution times of HEM to that of NR are listed
public domain, this is speculative. in column 2 of Table II for the three systems.
MATPOWER was used in order to compare the computation It was observed that the calculation of Padé approximants
times of the HEM with the NR method for the IEEE-118 bus, the took most of the execution time. The direct method for calcu-
300-bus and the 6057-bus ERCOT system [30]. The bus types lating the Padé approximants used here is an process,
were set to the bus types of the solved power flow case obtained where M is the degree of the numerator/denominator polyno-
from MATPOWER and then the execution times required for mials, which is time consuming. As another metric, the execu-
these two methods to solve the power-flow problems with these tion time for the Padé approximants was subtracted from the
fixed bus types were recorded. For each system, the computa- total execution times for HEM and the ratio was calculated again
tion times were obtained from five runs of the program and the as tabulated in the third column of Table II (Modified Execu-
minimum execution time was taken for each method. The ratios tion Time Ratio.) It can be seen that removing the execution
RAO et al.: HOLOMORPHIC EMBEDDING METHOD APPLIED TO THE POWER-FLOW PROBLEM
time of Padé approximants from the total time for HEM re-
duces the execution time for HEM significantly. Using this mod-
ified metric is believed to be more indicative of the execution
time ratio for a number of reasons. First, there are many faster
algorithms for calculating the Pade approximants, such
as Henrici's QD algorithm, or Wynn's Epsilon algorithm [22].
Second, the Padé approximant computations are highly paral-
lelizable. Also, while adding couplets, if the mismatch are found
to be quite large, multiple couplets can be added without calcu-
lating the approximants in order to accelerate the process. Fi-
nally, while we have calculated the Padé approximants for all
bus voltages starting at 11 terms, there are much more efficient
ways to handle this calculation, such as calculating the Padé's at
only a few sentinel nodes in order to detect convergence from
the voltage deviations; all the Padé approximants need to be cal-
culated only at the very end.
The times reported in Table II use MATLAB, an interpre-
tive language rather than a compiled language and rely on
MATLAB's sparse matrix solver. We make no claim that the
embedding and HEM recursive forms provided here are optimal
in terms of execution time and believe that no one embedding
is likely to be optimal for all systems or even for one system
over a range of loads. Further research is need in this area.
X. CONCLUSION
The HEM represents a class of nonlinear equations solvers
different in kind from Newton- and Gauss-type methods. One
can quibble about whether the HEM is or is not an iterative
method. If one defines iterative methods as those relying on
“successive displacements of the center” then the HEM is not it-
erative. The equivalent taxonomic descriptor that describes the
algorithm's distinctiveness best is, perhaps, “recursive.”.
We have observed that certain numerical-precision-related is-
sues arise at times, even when using double precision, but from
our limited experience we believe these issues can be resolved
by using extended precision. We have observed that the preci-
sion issues become more critical at high loading levels when the
system is close to its saddle-node bifurcation point.
There are certainly other issues that need to be investigated,
e.g., incorporation of various other discrete controls, but for the
basic power flow algorithm, and assuming an accuracy level re-
quired for engineering, the HEM as presented here is theoret-
ically guaranteed to converge to the HV solution, if it exists,
given that Stahl's theorem conditions are satisfied, precision is-
sues and Hopf bifurcations notwithstanding.
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Shruti Rao (S’13) was born in Vashi, Navi Mumbai, India, in 1990. She re-
ceived the B.Tech. degree in electrical engineering from Veermata Jijabai Tech-
nological Institute, Mumbai, India, in 2012, and M.S. degree in electrical engi-
neering from Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ, USA, in 2014, where she is
currently working toward the Ph.D. degree.
Yang Feng (S’12–M’15) was born in Wuhan, China, in 1989. He received the
B.S. degrees in electrical and electronic engineering from the Huazhong Uni-
versity of Science and Technology, Wuhan, China, in 2011, and the M.S. and
Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineering from Arizona State University, Tempe,
AZ, USA, in 2012 and 2015.
He is now a Software Engineer with Siemens, PTI, Houston, TX, USA.
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER SYSTEMS, VOL. 31, NO. 5, SEPTEMBER 2016
Daniel J. Tylavsky (SM’88) received the B.S. degrees in engineering science
and M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineering from the Pennsylvania
State University, University Park, in 1974, 1978, and 1982, respectively.
From 1974 to 1976, he was with Basic Technology, Inc., Pittsburgh, PA, USA,
and, from 1978 to 1980, he was an Instructor of electrical engineering with Penn-
sylvania State University. In 1982, he joined the Faculty of the School of Elec-
trical, Computer and Energy Engineering, Arizona State University, Tempe AZ,
USA.
Dr. Tylavsky is an RCA Fellow and NASA Fellow.
Muthu Kumar Subramanian (M’13) was born in Tirunelveli, India, in 1991.
He received the B.S. degree in electrical and electronics engineering from
College of Engineering Guindy, India, in 2012, and the M.S. degree in electrical
engineering from Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ, USA, in 2014. His
Master's thesis involved the development of a holomorphically embedded
model to represent the generator buses in solving the power-flow problem.
Currently he is with Alstom Grid, Redmond, WA, USA, as a Power Systems
Engineer. His primary area of interest is application of numerical methods to
power systems problems