Tractable Iterative Transmission Topology Control Heuristics Based on Node-Breaker Modeling

This paper addresses optimal power flow (OPF) problems that include a broader range of discrete decision variables using detailed node-breaker models of power networks, and it extends some of the existing heuristics to incorporate the node-breaker model. These heuristics can be used standalone or as a pre-screening step to generate a manageably small set of breaker candidates to be considered in a more computationally intensive mixed integer program (MIP) optimization. The computation time and quality of solution for the proposed heuristics here are benchmarked against some of the existing approaches. Numerical case studies demonstrate significant examples in which the methods proposed here yield improved operating points (i.e., lower operating cost), with low computational burden while more accurately representing the broader range of discrete decision variables.