Linear/Quadratic Programming-Based Optimal Power Flow using Linear Power Flow and Absolute Loss Approximations
For power system planners, this provides computationally efficient OPF approximations suitable for planning and operation, though the improvements are incremental over existing methods.
The authors propose linear/quadratic programming approximations of AC optimal power flow, achieving near-optimal results with reasonable voltage errors while significantly reducing computational complexity compared to nonlinear AC-OPF.
This paper presents novel methods to approximate the nonlinear AC optimal power flow (OPF) into tractable linear/quadratic programming (LP/QP) based OPF problems that can be used for power system planning and operation. We derive a linear power flow approximation and consider a convex reformulation of the power losses in the form of absolute value functions. We show four ways how to incorporate this approximation into LP/QP based OPF problems. In a comprehensive case study the usefulness of our OPF methods is analyzed and compared with an existing OPF relaxation and approximation method. As a result, the errors on voltage magnitudes and angles are reasonable, while obtaining near-optimal results for typical scenarios. We find that our methods reduce significantly the computational complexity compared to the nonlinear AC-OPF making them a good choice for planning purposes.