A primal-dual interior/exterior point method, with combined directions and quadratic test in reactive optimal power flow problems

In this paper, we propose a primal-dual interior/ exterior point method that uses the modified logarithmic barrier function together with a quadratic test strategy and new search direction procedures for solving the reactive optimal power flow problem. The quadratic test is proposed as an alternative strategy for the Cholesky procedure for calculating the positivity of the Hessian matrix of the problem. The new search directions investigated in the paper are determined by combining the search directions calculated in the predictor and corrector steps, and also by using information associated with the complementarity conditions. The method is implemented in Matlab and applied to solving the reactive optimal power flow problem for 9 and 39 bus systems, as well as for the IEEE 14, 30, 57 and 118 test systems.The results reinforce the efficiency of the method proposed for solving the problem.