AN INVESTIGATION OF THE SOLUTION TO THE OPTIMAL POWER FLOW PROBLEM INCORPORATING CONTINUATION METHODS

The computation of the Optimal Power Flow (OPF) remains a difficult nonlinear programming problem, despite the many advances in optimization methods over the years. Since the early 1980' s, some researchers have been investigating the use of parametric optimization techniques for OPF. This paper investigates a solution methodology based on the continuation method, a parametric technique. In this algorithm the continuation method is applied at various stages. The proposed algorithm uses the sequential quadratic programming strategy, but it replaces the standard subproblem module by a new parametric module. The “varying limits” strategy used here seems quite fast for solving the quadratic programs, and is formulated to be useful as a dispatching tool. In a second application of continuation methods, a load-tracking outer loop is grafted to the nonlinear solver. This quickly produces (discrete) optimal solution trajectories when fed the forecasted system loads as input. © 1990 IEEE