Model validation performs a basic level of sanity checking on the data attributes provided in the NMS model. After the model has been loaded each device is validated to determine if it has reasonable data. These checks are performed on a device by device basis without consideration of the context. Therefore model validation will catch things like a device's rating might be outside all reasonable limits (for example, a transformer has a negative rating), but it won't catch that a 1/0 Conductor has been used where you'd expect to see a 336 kCM device.

Validation failures are categorized as: Errors or Warnings. Power flow will not be attempted on islands containing errors; these will be reported as "Model Errors" in the FLM Summary window.

Details about model validation checks can be obtained in two ways.

Not all issues can be caught by sanity checking or are appropriate given the context of the device in the surrounding network. Some errors (for example, inappropriately sized capacitors or incorrect voltage angles on sources) will introduce errors that ultimately cause the Power Flow solution to fail. These types of failures will be reported as "Solution Failed" or "Inconclusive Solution" in the FLM tools.

These types of issues are somewhat harder to debug. To start with the details can be viewed by right clicking on the feeder and selecting "Show Errors and Statistics" and then looking under the "Solution Details" tab. This will give hints as to where the power flow engine is having difficulty converging on a solution.

Another approach it to use Study Mode analysis to try to locate the problem. By incrementally isolating sections of the network it is possible to narrow down the faulted device. Start off by removing everything below the energization sources and verify a solution can be obtained. Afterwards add in chunks of the network until the solution starts erroring again, this will help identify problematic regions and devices.