Semismooth Newton-Type Algorithms for Solving Optimal Power Flow Problems

This paper presents the semismooth Newton-type algorithms for solving Optimal Power Flow (OPF) problems. Considering that there exist plentiful bounded constraints in OPF, the paper treats general inequality constraints and bounded constraints separately. By introducing a diagonal matrix and the nonlinear complementarity function, the Karush-Kuhn-Tucker (KKT) system of the OPF is transformed equivalently to a system of nonsmooth bounded constrained equations. Comparing with the classical OPF methods and the Nonlinear Complementarity Problem (NCP) method, this treatment has two remarkable advantages. First, it has a strong ability to handle the inequality constraints in OPF problems. Second, it reduces the number of dual variables in the KKT system. Based on the reformulated equations, the paper designs a projected semismooth Newton algorithm which has nice global and local convergence property. Furthermore, according to the weak-coupling property in power systems, the paper presents a decoupled semismooth Newton-type algorithm. The decoupled method solves the system of equations via solving two lower dimension problems. Therefore the method saves the computing cost in theory. Some standard IEEE systems are used to test the two algorithms, and numerical results show that the proposed algorithms are promising for solving OPF problems.