Three-phase Power Flow Calculation Tool in Excel

Within the work of the CIRED working group “LOAD MODELLING AND DISTRIBUTION PLANNING IN THE ERA OF ELECTRIC MOBILITY”, an unbalanced power flow tool was developed in Excel. Especially, it is useful to investigate the effect of unbalanced charging of electric vehicles in low voltage grids. It is open-source and can be adapted to individual applications.

Many professional power flow tools exist already. They can be used to model low voltage grids in a high level of detail. Disadvantages are that they are complicated to use and a lot of input data is needed. The tool presented here can be used in Excel, so no extra software has to be installed. Additionally, it is easy to use and the level of complexity can be chosen by the user. In the following sections, the simulation framework is presented and basic instructions for the tool are given. Furthermore, an example to determine the effect of EV charging is shown.