SOCP Based Novel OPF Analysis Model for AC-DC Hybrid Power Distribution Networks

This article presents a novel Second Order Cone Programming (SOCP) based optimal power flow (OPF) model for AC-DC hybrid power distribution networks. The proposed OPF model relaxes the angle of the voltage and current and considers the network’s converters (i.e., AC-DC rectifiers, DC-AC inverters) along with the power flow relations within a conic solution space. The OPF model provides optimal operational points and recovers the optimal modulation index for the reference settings of the converters. Being convex, the proposed model produces a globally optimal solution and is tight for convex objective function (i.e., minimum network loss, minimum generation cost of DERs) for radial distribution networks. The proposed SOCP-OPF model is simulated and analyzed on different test cases considering the high penetration of distributed energy resources (DERs). Based on the simulation results, it is observed that the proposed model is computationally efficient and scalable to large networks for globally optimal and exact solutions for AC-DC hybrid power distribution networks with high DER penetration.