| name | powergraph-gnn-research |
| description | Research pipeline for topology-aware GNN representation learning on power grids using the PowerGraph benchmark. Use when (1) building physics-guided GNNs for power flow (PF), optimal power flow (OPF), or cascading failure prediction, (2) implementing self-supervised pretraining for power systems, (3) evaluating cascade explanation fidelity against ground-truth masks, or (4) conducting reproducible ML-for-power-systems research. Triggers include "PowerGraph", "power flow GNN", "OPF surrogate", "cascade prediction", "physics-guided GNN", "grid analytics ML", "power system representation learning". |
PowerGraph GNN Research Pipeline
Primary claim: A grid-specific self-supervised, physics-consistent GNN encoder improves PF/OPF learning (especially low-label/OOD), and transfers to cascading-failure prediction and explanation.
Scripts
| Task | Script |
|---|
| Data ingestion | scripts/load_powergraph.py |
| PF baseline | scripts/train_pf_baseline.py |
| Physics metrics | scripts/physics_residual.py |
| SSL pretraining | scripts/pretrain_ssl.py |
| Multi-task training | scripts/train_multitask.py |
| Explanation eval | scripts/eval_cascade_explanation.py |
Workflow
- Data → PowerGraph → PyG (PF/OPF node targets + cascade graph labels + exp masks)
- Baseline → PF regression with sin/cos angles + physics residual metric
- Multi-task → Shared encoder + PF/OPF/Cascade heads
- SSL → Masked injection/edge reconstruction → fine-tune
- Evaluation → Explanation AUC vs ground-truth masks + robustness tests
Validity Anchors (Critical)
Angle handling: Predict sin(θ), cos(θ), recover via atan2. Direct MSE on raw angles fails at ±π wrap-around.
Physics residual: Report KCL mismatch alongside accuracy. Ground truth ≈ 0, random >> 1.
Blocked splits: PowerGraph uses 1-year load @ 15-min. Use months 1-9 train / 10 val / 11-12 test. Random splits leak seasonal patterns.
Explanation fidelity: Use PowerGraph exp.mat ground-truth masks. Report AUC + Precision@K.
Reference Docs
references/data_pipeline.md — PowerGraph → PyG conversion, splits
references/model_architecture.md — Physics-guided message passing, heads
references/ssl_pretraining.md — Masked tasks, low-label experiments
references/uncertainty_quantification.md — Ensembles, MC dropout, calibration
references/evaluation_protocols.md — Metrics, robustness, statistical tests
references/publication_soundness.md — Reviewer risks, claim framing
references/experiment_configs.md — YAML config structure, sweeps
Common Pitfalls
| Issue | Fix |
|---|
| Angle wrap-around | sin/cos representation |
| Data leakage | Blocked time splits |
| Cascade imbalance | Weighted/focal loss |
| OOM large grids | Gradient checkpointing |
| SSL collapse | Stop-gradient + EMA encoder |
| Physics violations | Residual regularization |
Publication Checklist