A Current-Voltage Successive Linear Programming Approach to Solving the ACOPF

We propose a successive linear programming (SLP) approach to solve the alternating current optimal power flow (ACOPF) problem, which we refer to as the SLP IV-ACOPF algorithm. Our goal is to develop an ACOPF linearization that can be readily extended and integrated into more complex decision processes, e.g. unit commitment, transmission switching. We demonstrate the computational performance and convergence quality of the SLP IV-ACOPF compared to an interior-point algorithm for solving the nonlinear ACOPF, on publicly available IEEE (14 to 300 buses) and Polish networks (2,383 to 3,375 buses) without and with thermal line limits. While the interior point run-time scales as a polynomial function of network size, run-time of the SLP IV-ACOPF demonstrates linear scaling on these same networks. We also report indicators of convergence quality, specifically the aggregated production bid costs, whether constraint relaxation was required for the solution, and the network power factors.