stepspy

stepspy

stepspy is a Python module of Simulation Toolkit for Electrical Power Systems (STEPS).

Table of Contents

• Background
• Release Note
• Install
• Usage
• Examples
• Maintainers
• Contributing
• License

Background

stepspy is a Python module of Simulation Toolkit for Electrical Power Systems (STEPS). It provides wrapper of APIs of STEPS in a dynamic library.

STEPS is an open-source simulation toolkit for powerflow, short circuit and dynamic simulation of large-scale power systems. It provides detailed models of bus, ac line, transformer, 2 terminal LCC HVDC, VSC-HVDC, multi-terminal HVDC, generator, wind turbine generator, photovoltaic unit, energy storage, static var source, load, and fixed shunt. For more information about STEPS, see (https://gitee.com/lichgang/steps/ or https://github.com/changgang/steps).

Release Note

• 2.5.0. Sep. 23, 2026. Add APIs for blocking or bypassing LCC converter in MT-HVDC. Add APIs for updating dynamic model data after dynamic simulation is started. Add some tools. Default STEPS dynamic library on Windows 11 and Ubuntu 24.04.2 LTS are included in this release. If the dynamic library is incompatible with your operating system, ask maintainer for help.
• 2.4.0. Aug. 24, 2026. Add APIs for retrieving sequence Z, sequence and phase U and I, for short-circuit analysis.
• 2.3.0. Feb. 1, 2026. Add APIs for SV_SOURCE and MT_HVDC. Add function to save network islands to file. Add APIs for copying devices. Add APIs for replacing GENERATOR with WT_GENERATOR, PV_UNIT, ENERGY_STORAGE, and SV_SOURCE. Add APIs to scale LINE and TRANSFORMER. Add more APIs for short-circuit analysis.
• 2.2.1. Sep. 14, 2024. Update APIs for setting and getting parameters for GNERATOR, WT GENERATOR, PV UNIT, and ENERGY STORAGE with the same identifier at the same bus. Add APIs for setting monitored buses and generators for automatically changing dynamic simulation time step.
• 2.2.0. March 24, 2024. Add API change_dynamic_simulation_time_step() for manually changing dynamic simulation time step.
• 2.1.0. Nov. 2, 2023. Add API to check if NAN is detected in powerflow solution: is_nan_detected_in_powerflow_soulution, and get_powerflow_convergence_status
• 2.0.0. Oct. 16, 2023. Major version. Add short circuit analysis functions.
• 1.6.2. Oct. 13, 2023. Add option to select libSTEPS version when calling STEPS().
• 1.6.1. Sep. 26, 2022. Fix bug in set_bus_capacity.
• 1.6.0. April 13, 2022. Add VSC HVDC model APIs. Use STEPS>=1.6.0.
• 1.5.3.1. Oct. 20, 2021. Add new parameter to export dynamic model with internal bus number. Use STEPS>=1.5.4.
• 1.5.2. April 1, 2021. Fix bug of time.clock in pouch. Use time.perf_counter instead for Python>=3.8. Use STEPS>=1.5.2.
• 1.5.1. March. 24, 2021. Add new API to get generator related model internal variables. Use STEPS>=1.5.2.
• 1.4.1. Feb. 2, 2021. Add option export_full to API save_network_Y_matrix for exporting full network matrix. Use STEPS>=1.4.1.
• 1.4.0. Dec. 22, 2020. Add new API get_basic/user_meter_value. Add default parameter vbase to API bus_name2number. STEPS kernel is also updated.
• 1.3.1. Dec. 7, 2020. Rename the second "shed_generator" to "shed_wt_generator".
• 1.3.0. Sep. 27, 2020. Add new API: get_generator_governor_pmax/pmin, get_generator_governor_up/down_spinning_reserve, get_generator_governor_total_up/down_spinning_reserve_with_constraints, get_generator_governor_total_pmax/pmin_with_constraints.
• 1.2.1. Sep. 9, 2020. Add new API: set/get_encode(), disable/enable_generator_related_mode(). Default encoding is GB18030.
• 1.1.0. Apr. 22, 2020. Add new API: get_(lines/transformers/hvdcs)between_lines(), set(generator/wt_generator/pv_unit/energy_storage/load/hvdc)_power(), and is_system_angular_stable(). STEPS kernel version should be >=1.3.
• 1.0.0. Apr. 22, 2020. Add new API: clear_meters() to clear all meters for dynamic simulation. STEPS kernel version should be >=1.2.
• 0.13.0-alpha. Mar. 9, 2020. Add new APIs: change_bus_number() and change_bus_number_with_file(). get_areas(), get_zones(), and get_owners() are marked as deprecated. STEPS kernel version should be >=1.1.1.
• 0.12.0. Feb. 8, 2020. Add new APIs: check_dynamic_least_time_constants(). Recover the save_powerflow_data() API of v0.9.0.
• 0.11.5. Jan. 20, 2020. Add new APIs: set/get_dynamic_model_database_capacity().
• 0.11.4. Jan. 2, 2020. Fix bug of c_unit in pylibsteps.py.
• 0.11.3. Dec. 27, 2019. Add API to set toolkit log file: set_toolkit_log_file(log_file, log_file_append_mode). This version has fatal bug. DONOT use it. Use new version instead.
• 0.11.2. Dec. 19, 2019. Update 'is' to '==' when comparing string in stepspy.py.
• 0.11.1. Dec. 18, 2019. Add POUCH_CSV and POUCH_STEPS to stepspy for loading dynamic simulation result.
• 0.11.0. Nov. 18, 2019. Modify API of building and saving network matix. Add new API to build and save Z matrix. Not compatible with previous STEPS.
• 0.10.2. Nov. 13, 2019. Add new API get/set_hvdc_power_order_in_MW() for changing HVDC power order in dynamic simulation.
• 0.10.1. Oct. 29, 2019. Add new API load_powerflow_result() to load solved powerflow result for new non-flat start powerflow solution.
• 0.10.0. Oct. 26, 2019. Remove loading of libSTEPS-p.so/dll. Use libSTEPS.so/dll for building STEPS.
• 0.9.1. Oct. 21, 2019. Fix bug by changing c_unit to c_uint. Add warning to get_buses_with_constraints if old version is called.
• 0.9.0. Oct. 19, 2019. Add APIs save_powerflow_data_in_keep_mode/ordered_mode/optimized_mode. save_powerflow_data_in_optimized_mode() is suggested for improving performance. Add APIs of get_all_areas/zones/owners. Update get_buses_with_constraints.
• 0.8.6.1. Oct. 12, 2019. Change returned model name as None if dynamic model does not exist when calling get_xxx_related_model_name().
• 0.8.6. Oct. 12, 2019. Add API check_missing_models(), and get_all_xxxs() for getting all devices of the same type. Add new API check_powerflow_data() to replace check_database().
• 0.8.5. Oct. 9, 2019. Add API to retrieve model dynamic data pair, including generator, wt generator, pv unit, load, line, and HVDC.
• 0.8.4. Sep. 27, 2019. Add API to set/get generator voltage/mechanical power reference, and excitation voltage/mechanical power.
• 0.8.3. Sep. 25, 2019. Add API to get generator/wt_generator/pv_unit/loads with constraints of area and zone number.
• 0.8.2. Sep. 22, 2019. Update close/trip line/transformer breaker APIs, set prepare transformer meter APIs in stepspy.
• 0.8.1. Sep. 18, 2019. Update and README.
• 0.8.0. Sep. 18, 2019. Update to enable both parallel and serial library. Since STEPS 0.6.3.
• 0.7.1. Sep. 18, 2019. Fix API to set and get parallel thread number.
• 0.7.0. Sep. 18, 2019. Add new API to set parallel thread number. Update README.
• 0.6.1. Aug. 27, 2019
• 0.6.0. Aug. 25, 2019

Install

Install stepspy

To install stepspy, you can run the following codes on your computer or server:

python -m pip install stepspy

To update stepspy, you can run the following codes on your computer or server:

python -m pip install --upgrade stepspy

If you want to manually install stepspy, follow the instructions:

1. Go to https://gitee.com/lichgang/steps or https://github.com/changgang/steps to download or fork the latest version of STEPS.
2. Go to python/ folder of STEPS, and copy the latest version of stepspy from steps/python/stepspy-current/stepspy to PYTHONPATH/Lib/site-packages/.

Install dynamic library

From version 2.5.0, default STEPS dynamic library on Windows 11 and Ubuntu 24.04.2 LTS are included in this release. If the dynamic library is incompatible with your operating system, you can follow the following instructions to compile and install the dynamic library of STEPS by yourself.

1. Go to steps@gitee or steps@github to download or fork the latest version of STEPS. The stable version is usually the [main] branch, and the latest version is usually the [dev] branch.
2. Compile STEPS into dynamic library following instructions of STEPS using Code::Blocks or Cmake. 3, Move the dynamic library of STEPS to stepspy/libsteps/ in the PYTHONPATH/Lib/site-packages/. 4, If the VC runtime is missing, download and install Microsoft Visual C++ 2017 Redistributable of 32 or 64 bit version. 5, If VC runtime or Mingw Runtime is missing, install vcredit or copy libwinpthread-1.dll from mingw compiler/bin/ to c:/windows/system32 and c:/windows/SysWOW64 6, For Windows platform, Python 3.7 and 3.8 may suffer path searching problem for some unknown reason. In this case, copy all dlls in the mingw/bin folder to the same folder of libsteps.dll.

Usage

Examples

Maintainers

@changgang lichgang@sdu.edu.cn from the School of Electrical Engineering, Shandong University, China

Contributing

Feel free to dive in! Open an issue.

License

MIT @ Changgang Li