Abstract

GOMEZ-RAMIREZ, Gustavo Adolfo; MORA-JIMENEZ, Gonzalo  and  MEZA, Carlos. Simulación del sistema de interconexión eléctrica de los países de América Central usando ETAP. Tecnología en Marcha [online]. 2023, vol.36, n.2, pp.50-58. ISSN 0379-3982.  http://dx.doi.org/10.18845/tm.v36i2.6007.

The Central American Countries Electric Interconnection System (SIEPAC) has been an engine of development for the region. From its establishment the benefits have been substantial, showing socio-economic advances of great importance for the area’s inhabitants. This article shows a modeling of the Regional Electric System (SER) to carry out power flow studies using the ETAP (Electrical Transient Analyzer Program) software. As far as the authors are aware, there is only one model of the Central American regional system using PSS/E (Power System Simulator for Engineering). In this article, various scenarios were simulated and analyzed, varied and different operating conditions such as winter and summer in maximum, medium and minimum load and generation are considered. The power grid studied is more than 2150 bus that covers all the countries: Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Costa Rica and Panama. Comparing the results of power flows between ETAP and PSS/E, satisfactory results were obtained since the variations were less than 0.5% between the power flows among countries. In this way, the results of ETAP were validated under the same conditions of analysis. As a conclusion, for academic or research purposes, the Central American interconnection power system can be simulated using the ETAP software, instead of PSS/E, which is the one used nowadays by the Central American network operators.

Keywords : ETAP; power system simulation; power systems; load flow; power systems analysis computing.

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