A Decomposition Algorithm with Fast Identification of Critical Contingencies for Large-Scale Security-Constrained AC-OPF

The article “A Decomposition Algorithm with Fast Identification of Critical Contingencies for Large-Scale Security-Constrained AC-OPF” presents the decomposition algorithm used by Team GO-SNIP for the ARPA-E Grid Optimization (GO) Competition Challenge 1, held from November 2018 through October 2019. The algorithm involves unique contingency ranking and evaluation strategies for determining the important contingencies to include in a master problem that approximates the original large-scale security-constrained problem. It also involves efficient strategies for handling the complementarity constraints that appear in the model and for handling the arising degeneracies. Software implementation details are described, and the results of an extensive set of numerical experiments are provided to illustrate the effectiveness of each of the used techniques. Team GO-SNIP received a second-place finish in Challenge 1 of the Go Competition. A decomposition algorithm for solving large-scale security-constrained AC optimal power flow problems is presented. The formulation considered is the one used in the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy Grid Optimization Competition, Challenge 1, held from November 2018 through October 2019. Algorithmic strategies are proposed for contingency selection, fast contingency evaluation, handling complementarity constraints, avoiding issues related to degeneracy, and exploiting parallelism. The results of numerical experiments are provided to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed techniques as compared with alternative strategies. History: This paper has been accepted for the Operations Research Special Issue on Computational Advances in Short-Term Power System Operations. Funding: This work was supported by the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy [Grant DE-AR0001073].