2016 American Control Conference (ACC)

Boston Marriott Copley Place

July 6-8, 2016. Boston, MA, USA

Introduction to the Power Flow Equations and Moment/Sum-of-Squares

Relaxations of Optimal Power Flow Problems
Daniel K Molzahn, Argonne National Laboratory
Abstract: Recent advances in computational methods related to the power flow equations
provide opportunities to better analyze and operate electric power systems. This presentation
begins by overviewing the power flow equations and discussing the state-of-the-art in solution
techniques.
After this overview, this presentation will discuss recent work on convex relaxations of
the power flow equations. With the ability to globally solve many power system optimization
problems (most notably the optimal power flow (OPF) problem used to determine an optimal
operating point), significant research interest has focused on convex relaxations of the power
flow equations. Existing relaxations globally solve many OPF problems. However, there are
practical problems for which existing relaxations fail to yield physically meaningful solutions.
A hierarchy of moment/sum-of-squares relaxations globally solve many problems for
which existing relaxations fail. The moment relaxations, which take the form of semidefinite
programs, are developed from the Lasserre hierarchy for generalized moment problems. Increasing the order in this hierarchy results in tighter relaxations at the computational cost
of larger semidefinite programs. Recent computational improvements enable faster solution
of larger OPF problems. These advances include exploiting network sparsity, selectively
targeting the application of the computationally intensive higher-order moment constraints,
relaxing some of the semidefinite programming constraints to second-order cone programming constraints, and using a complex analogue of the Lasserre hierarchy.
Associated lead tutorial paper: Dhagash Mehta, Daniel K. Molzahn and Konstantin
Turitsyn, Recent Advances in Computational Methods for the Power Flow Equations.

978-1-4673-8682-1/$31.00 2016 AACC

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