31 research outputs found
Distributed algorithms for optimal power flow problem
Optimal power flow (OPF) is an important problem for power generation and it is in general non-convex. With the employment of renewable energy, it will be desirable if OPF can be solved very efficiently so that its solution can be used in real time. With some special network structure, e.g. trees, the problem has been shown to have a zero duality gap and the convex dual problem yields the optimal solution. In this paper, we propose a primal and a dual algorithm to coordinate the smaller subproblems decomposed from the convexified OPF. We can arrange the subproblems to be solved sequentially and cumulatively in a central node or solved in parallel in distributed nodes. We test the algorithms on IEEE radial distribution test feeders, some random tree-structured networks, and the IEEE transmission system benchmarks. Simulation results show that the computation time can be improved dramatically with our algorithms over the centralized approach of solving the problem without decomposition, especially in tree-structured problems. The computation time grows linearly with the problem size with the cumulative approach while the distributed one can have size-independent computation time.postprin
Geometry of Power Flows and Optimization in Distribution Networks
We investigate the geometry of injection regions and its relationship to
optimization of power flows in tree networks. The injection region is the set
of all vectors of bus power injections that satisfy the network and operation
constraints. The geometrical object of interest is the set of Pareto-optimal
points of the injection region. If the voltage magnitudes are fixed, the
injection region of a tree network can be written as a linear transformation of
the product of two-bus injection regions, one for each line in the network.
Using this decomposition, we show that under the practical condition that the
angle difference across each line is not too large, the set of Pareto-optimal
points of the injection region remains unchanged by taking the convex hull.
Moreover, the resulting convexified optimal power flow problem can be
efficiently solved via }{ semi-definite programming or second order cone
relaxations. These results improve upon earlier works by removing the
assumptions on active power lower bounds. It is also shown that our practical
angle assumption guarantees two other properties: (i) the uniqueness of the
solution of the power flow problem, and (ii) the non-negativity of the
locational marginal prices. Partial results are presented for the case when the
voltage magnitudes are not fixed but can lie within certain bounds.Comment: To Appear in IEEE Transaction on Power System