MATPOWER Documentation

There are four primary sources of documentation for MATPOWER.

Also, there is now a new MATPOWER Documentation site being developed. As of the beginning of 2023, it is still very incomplete, except for the nearly finished draft of the new developer’s manual, which describes the new architecture introduced in MATPOWER 8.

Manuals

The MATPOWER and MOST User’s Manuals are included in the GitHub distribution (docs/MATPOWER-manual.pdf and most/docs/MOST-manual.pdf) and the latest released versions are always available online, respectively, at:

Previous versions are also available here.

Built-in Help

Each M-file has its own documentation which can be accessed by typing at the MATLAB or Octave prompt:

help <name of M-file>

Documentation for the case data file format can be found by typing:

help caseformat

If something is still unclear after checking the manual and the help, the source code is the documentation. 😉

Changes

Changes to MATPOWER in each released version are summarized in the release notes, found on GitHub in docs/relnotes and in Appendix H of the MATPOWER User’s Manual. A complete, detailed change log, even for unreleased versions, is available in the CHANGES.md file.

Technical Notes

  1. R. D. Zimmerman, “Uniform Price Auctions and Optimal Power Flow,” MATPOWER Technical Note 1, February 2010. Available: https://matpower.org/docs/TN1-OPF-Auctions.pdf
    DOI
  2. R. D. Zimmerman, “AC Power Flows, Generalized OPF Costs and their Derivatives using Complex Matrix Notation,” MATPOWER Technical Note 2, February 2010. Available: https://matpower.org/docs/TN2-OPF-Derivatives.pdf
    DOI
  3. B. Sereeter and R. D. Zimmerman, “Addendum to AC Power Flows and their Derivatives using Complex Matrix Notation: Nodal Current Balance,” MATPOWER Technical Note 3, April 2018. Available: https://matpower.org/docs/TN3-More-OPF-Derivatives.pdf
    DOI
  4. B. Sereeter and R. D. Zimmerman, “AC Power Flows, Generalized OPF Costs and their Derivatives using Complex Matrix Notation and Cartesian Coordinate Voltages,” MATPOWER Technical Note 4, April 2018. Available: https://matpower.org/docs/TN4-OPF-Derivatives-Cartesian.pdf
    DOI
  5. R. D. Zimmerman, “MP-Element: A Unified MATPOWER Element Model,” MATPOWER Technical Note 5, October 2020. Available: https://matpower.org/docs/TN5-MP-Element.pdf
    DOI

See Publications for additional MATPOWER-related publications.

Please cite MATPOWER in your own publications derived from the use of MATPOWER.