Observation of State and Topology in DC Networks

This paper copes with the state estimation and topology identification problems in direct current (DC) networks. This problem is challenging due to binary decisions and nonlinear relations between sensor measurements and state variables. We introduce a non-convex nuclear norm estimator whose non-convexity is addressed by incorporating two inertia terms. In the presence of noise, penalty terms are integrated into the objective function to estimate unknown noise values. Numerical results for the modified IEEE 9-bus, 14-bus, and 30-bus systems corroborate the merits of the proposed technique. Furthermore, this technique is experimentally validated for a converter-augmented 14-bus system in a real-time hardware-in-the-loop platform.