skip to main content
US FlagAn official website of the United States government
dot gov icon
Official websites use .gov
A .gov website belongs to an official government organization in the United States.
https lock icon
Secure .gov websites use HTTPS
A lock ( lock ) or https:// means you've safely connected to the .gov website. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites.


Title: Towards Optimal Kron-based Reduction Of Networks (Opti-KRON) for the Electric Power Grid
For fast timescales or long prediction horizons, the AC optimal power flow (OPF) problem becomes a computational challenge for large-scale, realistic AC networks. To overcome this challenge, this paper presents a novel network reduction methodology that leverages an efficient mixed-integer linear programming (MILP) formulation of a Kron-based reduction that is optimal in the sense that it balances the degree of the reduction with resulting modeling errors in the reduced network. The method takes as inputs the full AC network and a pre-computed library of AC load flow data and uses the graph Laplacian to constraint nodal reductions to only be feasible for neighbors of non-reduced nodes. This results in a highly effective MILP formulation which is embedded within an iterative scheme to successively improve the Kron-based network reduction until convergence. The resulting optimal network reduction is, thus, grounded in the physics of the full network. The accuracy of the network reduction methodology is then explored for a 100+ node medium-voltage radial distribution feeder example across a wide range of operating conditions. It is finally shown that a network reduction of 25-85% can be achieved within seconds and with worst-case voltage magnitude deviation errors within any super node cluster of less than 0.01pu. These results illustrate that the proposed optimization-based approach to Kron reduction of networks is viable for larger networks and suitable for use within various power system applications.  more » « less
Award ID(s):
2047306
PAR ID:
10397909
Author(s) / Creator(s):
;
Date Published:
Journal Name:
2022 IEEE 61st Conference on Decision and Control
Page Range / eLocation ID:
5713 to 5718
Format(s):
Medium: X
Sponsoring Org:
National Science Foundation
More Like this
  1. The Optimal Power Shutoff (OPS) problem is an optimization problem that makes power line de-energization decisions in order to reduce the risk of igniting a wildfire, while minimizing the load shed of customers. This problem, with DC linear power flow equations, has been used in many studies in recent years. However, using linear approximations for power flow when making decisions on the network topology is known to cause challenges with AC feasibility of the resulting network, as studied in the related contexts of optimal transmission switching or grid restoration planning. This paper explores the accuracy of the DC OPS formulation and the ability to recover an AC-feasible power flow solution after de-energization decisions are made. We also extend the OPS problem to include variants with the AC, Second-Order-Cone, and Network-Flow power flow equations, and compare them to the DC approximation with respect to solution quality and time. The results highlight that the DC approximation overestimates the amount of load that can be served, leading to poor de-energization decisions. The AC and SOC-based formulations are better, but prohibitively slow to solve for even modestly sized networks thus demonstrating the need for new solution methods with better trade-offs between computational time and solution quality. 
    more » « less
  2. Dispatching a large fleet of distributed energy resources (DERs) in response to wholesale energy market or regional grid signals requires solving a challenging disaggregation problem when the DERs are located within a distribution network. This manuscript presents a computationally tractable convex inner approximation for the optimal power flow (OPF) problem that characterizes a feeders aggregate DERs hosting capacity and enables a realtime, grid-aware dispatch of DERs for radial distribution networks. The inner approximation is derived by considering convex envelopes on the nonlinear terms in the AC power flow equations. The resulting convex formulation is then used to derive provable nodal injection limits, such that any combination of DER dispatches within their respective nodal limits is guaranteed to be AC admissible. These nodal injection limits are then used to construct a realtime, open-loop control policy for dispatching DERs at each location in the network to collectively deliver grid services. The IEEE-37 distribution network is used to validate the technical results and highlight various use-cases. 
    more » « less
  3. Optimization problems that involve topology opti- mization in scenarios with large scale outages, such as post- disaster restoration or public safety power shutoff planning, are very challenging to solve. Using simple power flow representa- tions such as DC power flow or network flow models results in low quality solutions which requires significantly higher- than-predicted load shed to become AC feasible. Recent work has shown that formulations based on the Second Order Cone (SOC) power flow formulation find very high quality solutions with low load shed, but the computational burden of these formulations remains a significant challenge. With the aim of reducing computational time while maintaining high solution quality, this work explores formulations which replace the conic constraints with a small number of linear cuts. The goal of this approach is not to find an exact power flow solution, but rather to identify good binary decisions, where the power flow can be resolved after the binary variables are fixed. We find that a simple reformulation of the Second Order Cone Optimal Power Shutoff problem can greatly improve the solution speed, but that a full linearization of the SOC voltage cone equation results in an overestimation of the amount of power that can be delivered to loads. 
    more » « less
  4. This paper uses convex inner approximations (CIA) of the AC power flow to tackle the optimization problem of quantifying a 3-phase distribution feeder’s capacity to host distributed energy resources (DERs). This is often connoted hosting capacity (HC), but herein we consider separative bounds for each node on positive and negative DER injections, which ensures that injections within these nodal limits satisfy feeder voltage and current limits and across nodes sum up to the feeder HC. The methodology decomposes a 3-phase feeder into separate phases and applies CIA-based techniques to each phase. An analysis is developed to determine the technical condition under which this per-phase approach can still satisfy network constraints. New approaches are then presented that modify the per-phase optimization problems to overcome conservativeness inherent to CIA methods and increase overall HC, including selectively modifying the per-phase impedances and iteratively relaxing per-phase voltage bounds. Discussion is included on trade-offs and feasibility. To validate the methodology, simulation-based analysis is conducted with the IEEE 37-node test feeder and a real 534-node unbalanced radial distribution feeder. 
    more » « less
  5. The widespread deployment of smart heterogeneous technologies and the growing complexity in our modern society calls for effective coordination of the interdependent lifeline networks. In particular, operation coordination of electric power and water infrastructures is urgently needed as the water system is one of the most energy-intensive networks, an interruption in which may quickly evolve into a dramatic societal concern. The closely-intertwined ecosystem of water and power infrastructures is commonly known as water-energy nexus. This paper develops a novel analytic for uncertainty-aware day-ahead operation optimization of the interconnected power and water systems (PaWS). Joint probabilistic constraint (JPC) programming is employed to capture the uncertainties in wind resources and water demand forecasts. The proposed integrated stochastic model is presented as a non-linear non-convex optimization problem, where the non-linear hydraulic constraints in the water network are linearized using piece-wise linearization technique, and the non-convexity is efficiently tackled with a Boolean solution methodology to convert the proposed model with JPCs to a tractable mixed-integer linear programming (MILP) formulation that can be quickly solved to optimality. The suggested framework is applied to a 15-node commercial-scale water network jointly operated with a power transmission system using a modified IEEE 57-bus test system. The numerical results demonstrate the of the proposed stochastic framework, resulting in cost reduction (13% on average when compared to the traditional setting) and energy saving of the integrated model under different realizations of uncertain renewable energy sources (RESs) and water demand scenarios. Additionally, the scalability of the proposed model is tested on a modified IEEE 118-bus test system connected to five water networks. 
    more » « less