Virtual-Voltage Partition-Based Approach to Optimal Transmission Switching

This article deals with optimal transmission switching (OTS) problems involving binary decisions about network topology and nonconvex power flow constraints. We adopt a semidefinite programming formulation for the (OPF) problem that, however, remains due to presence of discrete variables bilinear products between decision variables. To tackle latter, we introduce physically inspired, virtual-voltage approximation that leads provable lower upper bounds on solution original problem. deal exponential complexity caused by variables, graph partition-based algorithm breaks into several parallel mixed-integer subproblems smaller size. Simulations IEEE bus test cases demonstrate high degree accuracy affordable computational requirements our approach.