Impact of Internal Coupling Current Variables on Performance

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#554 opened on Aug 27, 2026 3 comments 3 reactions 1 assignee View on GitHub

@nkoukpaizan is already working on this.

Since Sep 14, 2026.

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Description

help wanted question

Summary

@nkoukpaizan @alexander-novo @Steven-Roberts Here is benchmarking comparing the performance of direct contribution to bus KCL equations (Scenario A) vs modeling the branch currents as internal variables which are then added to bus equations (Scenario B). Similar performance tradeoff is observed for LoadZIP, Genrou, Gensal, and REGCA.

Branches: lukel/branch-bench-dev and lukel/branch-bench-dev2

Disclosure: This report was put together with the help of Codex

Branch Current Benchmark

Setup

Two designs considered:

A: Branch, LoadZ, LoadZIP, GENROU, and GENSAL have no internal network-current variables. Current is computed from bus voltage and added to the bus residuals.
B: Branch has four internal algebraic terminal-current variables, while LoadZ, LoadZIP, GENROU, and GENSAL each have two internal algebraic network-current variables.

REGCA is unchanged because of an unrelated issue with how it interfaces with REPCA

B is 1.90× slower on ACTIVSg10k, 3.88× slower on ACTIVSg2000, and 1.71× slower on WECC240. Three-quarters of the added time is KLU setup and solve.

Setup

Case	Buses	Branches	Other models
ACTIVSg10k	10,000	12,706	4,722 LoadZIP, 1,456 IEEEST, 1,456 machines, 1 BusFault
ACTIVSg2000	2,000	3,206	1,507 LoadZ, 432 GENROU, 432 IEEET1, 414 TGOV1, 2,000 BusFault
WECC240	243	447	141 LoadZIP, 103 GENROU, 37 REGCA

10second simulation, adpative stepping, rel_tol=1e-5, abs_tol=1e-7, fault 1.0 to 1.1 s, no monitors. Clang 16 RelWithDebInfo, SUNDIALS 7.7.0 IDA with KLU, i9-12900K pinned to one core, five trials per cell, medians are reported here.

Wall time

Case	A (s)	B (s)	B/A
10k	29.61 ± 0.94	56.36 ± 1.86	1.90×
2k	2.06 ± 0.31	7.98 ± 0.37	3.88×
WECC	0.166 ± 0.006	0.284 ± 0.013	1.71×

Size and memory

Case	Scenario	States	Differential	Algebraic	Jacobian nnz	nnz/state	Peak RSS (KiB)
10k	A	83,124	27,391	55,733	340,872	4.1008	194,212
10k	B	146,304	27,391	118,913	591,680	4.0442	252,584
2k	A	20,474	5,148	15,326	86,664	4.2329	56,716
2k	B	37,176	5,148	32,028	156,056	4.1978	77,820
WECC	A	5,425	1,804	3,621	19,686	3.6288	19,580
WECC	B	7,701	1,804	5,897	29,146	3.7847	21,808

Solver time by category (s)

Case	Scenario	Total	Residual	Jacobian	KLU setup	KLU solve	Other
10k	A	29.30364	15.45922	3.17890	1.60592	5.08457	3.93142
10k	B	56.03708	18.32613	3.45491	11.97431	15.35627	6.92547
2k	A	1.99391	0.88292	0.28773	0.18517	0.36195	0.27048
2k	B	7.89756	1.93148	0.31752	2.07130	2.83228	0.74502
WECC	A	0.15353	0.06115	0.02501	0.01305	0.02390	0.03090
WECC	B	0.27061	0.07250	0.02545	0.05673	0.07298	0.04659

Added solver time, B − A

Five-run mean differences.

Bucket	10k (s)	10k share	2k (s)	2k share	WECC (s)	WECC share
Residual	+2.914612	10.48%	+1.071108	17.83%	+0.009630	8.19%
Jacobian	+0.362189	1.30%	+0.019318	0.32%	−0.000039	−0.03%
KLU setup	+10.667856	38.34%	+1.892193	31.49%	+0.043211	36.74%
KLU solve	+10.685275	38.41%	+2.545384	42.36%	+0.049212	41.84%
Other	+3.192198	11.47%	+0.481014	8.00%	+0.015606	13.27%
Total	+27.822130	100.00%	+6.009017	100.00%	+0.117620	100.00%

Per-call cost

Case	Operation	A calls	B calls	B/A calls	A µs/call	B µs/call	B/A µs/call	B/A total time
10k	Residual	2,390	2,186	0.915×	6,468.29	8,383.41	1.296×	1.185×
10k	Jacobian	191	175	0.916×	16,643.45	19,742.34	1.186×	1.087×
10k	KLU setup	191	175	0.916×	8,407.96	68,424.63	8.138×	7.456×
10k	KLU solve	2,390	2,186	0.915×	2,127.43	7,024.83	3.302×	3.020×
2k	Residual	1,110	1,164	1.049×	795.42	1,659.35	2.086×	2.188×
2k	Jacobian	91	79	0.868×	3,161.84	4,019.23	1.271×	1.104×
2k	KLU setup	91	79	0.868×	2,034.86	26,218.94	12.885×	11.186×
2k	KLU solve	1,110	1,164	1.049×	326.08	2,433.23	7.462×	7.825×
WECC	Residual	799	839	1.050×	76.54	86.41	1.129×	1.186×
WECC	Jacobian	65	58	0.892×	384.78	438.83	1.140×	1.018×
WECC	KLU setup	65	58	0.892×	200.79	978.01	4.871×	4.346×
WECC	KLU solve	799	839	1.050×	29.91	86.98	2.908×	3.054×

Branch residual

Share is of total model residual time.

Case	A (s)	B (s)	B/A	A share	B share
10k	6.584044	8.082607	1.228×	49.29%	51.00%
2k	0.278229	0.739956	2.660×	38.05%	45.19%
WECC	0.015481	0.017768	1.148×	29.10%	30.07%

Dominant language: C++
Stars: 27
Forks: 11
Avg merge: 3d 8h
Merged PRs (30d): 23

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Impact of Internal Coupling Current Variables on Performance

Assessment

Description

Summary

Branch Current Benchmark

Setup

Setup

Wall time

Size and memory

Solver time by category (s)

Added solver time, B − A

Per-call cost

Branch residual

Contributor guide

First steps

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