7 research outputs found
From Electrical Power Flows to Unsplittabe Flows: A QPTAS for OPF with Discrete Demands in Line Distribution Networks
The {\it AC Optimal Power Flow} (OPF) problem is a fundamental problem in
power systems engineering which has been known for decades. It is a notoriously
hard problem due mainly to two reasons: (1) non-convexity of the power flow
constraints and (2) the (possible) existence of discrete power injection
constraints. Recently, sufficient conditions were provided for certain convex
relaxations of OPF to be exact in the continuous case, thus allowing one to
partially address the issue of non-convexity. In this paper we make a first
step towards addressing the combinatorial issue. Namely, by establishing a
connection to the well-known {\it unsplittable flow problem} (UFP), we are able
to generalize known techniques for the latter problem to provide approximation
algorithms for OPF with discrete demands. As an application, we give a
quasi-polynomial time approximation scheme for OPF in line networks under some
mild assumptions and a single generation source. We believe that this
connection can be further leveraged to obtain approximation algorithms for more
general settings, such as multiple generation sources and tree networks