Learning-Assisted Optimization for Transmission Switching

arXiv2304.07269MaRDI QIDQ6509652FDOQ6509652

Salvador Pineda, Juan Miguel Morales, Asunción Jiménez-Cordero

Abstract: The design of new strategies that exploit methods from Machine Learning to facilitate the resolution of challenging and large-scale mathematical optimization problems has recently become an avenue of prolific and promising research. In this paper, we propose a novel learning procedure to assist in the solution of a well-known computationally difficult optimization problem in power systems: The Direct Current Optimal Transmission Switching (DC-OTS). This model consists in finding the configuration of the power network that results in the cheapest dispatch of the power generating units. For this, the model includes a set of binaries that determine the on/off status of the switchable transmission lines. Therefore, the DC-OTS problem takes the form of a mixed-integer program, which is NP-hard in general. Its solution has been approached by way of exact and heuristic methods. The former employ techniques from mixed-integer programming to solve the problem to certified global optimality, while the latter seek to identify good solutions quickly. While the heuristic methods tend to be comparatively much faster, they may suggest suboptimal or even infeasible networks topologies. The proposed approach in this paper leverages known solutions to past instances of the DC-OTS problem to speed up the mixed-integer optimization of a new unseen model. Although it does not offer optimality guarantees, a series of numerical experiments run on a real-life power system dataset show that it features a very high success rate in identifying the optimal grid topology (especially when compared to alternative competing heuristics), while rendering remarkable speed-up factors.

Has companion code repository: https://github.com/groupoasys/learning_assisted_optimization_for_transmission_switching

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