Power Grid Topology Control
For power system operators and researchers, this monograph provides a comprehensive overview of topology control techniques, which are crucial for enhancing grid flexibility and stability in the face of increasing renewable energy penetration.
This monograph surveys the development of power grid topology control, covering steady-state and transient topology control for transmission and distribution networks, as well as network topology transition problems. It reviews fundamental constraints, state-of-the-art methods, and recent advances, highlighting the potential of network-side flexibility to address challenges from renewable integration and climate impacts.
Power grids are facing major challenges from growing renewable integration and worsening climate impacts. While flexibility on both the demand and generation sides has been widely explored to address these challenges, network-side flexibility, especially in network topology, remains highly underutilized. Advances in communication, power electronics, and circuit breakers have made network topology increasingly controllable. However, leveraging this topological flexibility poses substantial challenges, primarily due to the inherent non-convexity and hybrid dynamics in associated optimization and control problems. This monograph surveys the development of power grid topology control in both early and recent years. It begins by discussing the fundamental topological constraints involved in topology control problems. Subsequently, it introduces steady-state topology control for transmission and distribution networks separately, covering fundamentals, a state-of-the-art review, and representative recent advances. Additionally, the network topology transition problem, which addresses the implementation of optimal topology solutions and has garnered increasing attention in recent years, is further modeled and analyzed. Beyond utilizing the flexibility of steady-state network topology, controlling network topology during transients can also contribute to system stabilization. Traditional approaches, such as intentional controlled islanding for transmission networks, as well as recently developed topology control methods for microgrid stabilization, exemplify this concept. Finally, a summary of this monograph is provided.