On degeneracy issues in multi-parametric programming and critical region exploration based distributed optimization in smart grid operations

Improving renewable energy resource utilization efficiency is crucial to reducing carbon emissions, and multiparametric programming has provided a systematic perspective in conducting analysis and optimization toward this goal in smart grid operations. This paper focuses on two aspects of interest related to multi-parametric linear/quadratic programming (mpLP/QP). First, we study degeneracy issues of mpLP/QP. A novel approach to deal with degeneracies is proposed to find all critical regions containing the given parameter. Our method leverages properties of the multi-parametric linear complementary problem, vertex searching technique, and complementary basis enumeration. In this way, the essence of degeneracy is reflected by the nonuniqueness of the complementary basis. Finding such bases proves helpful in generating related critical regions. Second, an improved critical region exploration (CRE) method to solve distributed LP/QP is proposed under a general mpLP/QP-based formulation. The improved CRE incorporates the proposed approach to handle degeneracies. A cutting plane update and an adaptive stepsize scheme are also integrated to accelerate convergence under different problem settings. The computational efficiency is verified on multi-area tie-line scheduling problems with various testing benchmarks and initial states.