IMPORTANCE OF SWING BUS
The slack or swing bus is usually a PV bus with the largest capacity generator of the given system connected to it. The generator at the swing bus supplies the power difference between the “specified power into the system at the other buses” and the “total system output plus losses”. Thus swing bus is needed to supply the additional real and reactive power to meet the losses. Both the magnitude and phase angle of voltage is specified at the swing bus, or otherwise, they are assumed to be equal to 1.0 pu and 00, as per the flat-start procedure of iterative solutions.
The real and reactive powers at the swing bus are found by the computer routine as part of the load flow solution process. It is to be noted that the source at the swing bus is a perfect one, called the swing machine, or slack machine. It is voltage regulated, i.e., the magnitude of voltage is fixed. The phase angle is the system reference phase and hence is fixed. The generator at the swing bus has a torque angle and excitation which vary or swing as the demand changes. This variation is such as to produces fixed voltage.
