A comparison of convex formulations for the joint planning of microgrids

Planning of autonomous microgrids differs from traditional distribution planning because of the need to plan investments not only in the network but also in generation capacity. Generation and distribution planning, traditionally performed separately should be done simultaneously in this case to provide a cost-effective planning solution. Joint planning of generation and distribution can be cast as mixed-integer non-linear integer program and is difficult to solve due to the presence of both integer variables and non-linear constraints. In this study, we use the framework of convex programming to tackle the joint planning problem. The study presents four different convex relaxations of this problem, with different levels of accuracy. We compare their results in terms of computation time and solution quality in order to determine the most relevant formulation to use in function of the problem size. Document type : Communication à un colloque (Conference Paper) Référence bibliographique Martin, Benoît ; De Jaeger, Emmanuel ; Glineur, François. A comparison of convex formulations for the joint planning of microgrids.24th International Conference & Exhibition on Electricity Distribution (CIRED) (Glasgow, du 12/06/2017 au 15/06/2017). In: CIRED, Open Access Proc. J, Vol. 2017, p. 2174–2178 DOI : 10.1049/oap-cired.2017.0841 ISSN 2515-0855 doi: 10.1049/oap-cired.2017.0841 www.ietdl.org Comparison of convex formulations for the joint planning of microgrids Benoît Martin1 ✉, Emmanuel De Jaeger1, François Glineur2 Mechatronic, Electrical Energy, and Dynamic Systems Department (MEED), Université Catholique de Louvain, Belgium Center for Operational Research and Econometrics (CORE), Université Catholique de Louvain, Belgium ✉ E-mail: benoit.martin@uclouvain.be Abstract: Planning of autonomous microgrids differs from traditional distribution planning because of the need to plan investments not only in the network but also in generation capacity. Generation and distribution planning, traditionally performed separately should be done simultaneously in this case to provide a cost-effective planning solution. Joint planning of generation and distribution can be cast as mixed-integer non-linear integer program and is difficult to solve due to the presence of both integer variables and non-linear constraints. In this study, we use the framework of convex programming to tackle the joint planning problem. The study presents four different convex relaxations of this problem, with different levels of accuracy. We compare their results in terms of computation time and solution quality in order to determine the most relevant formulation to use in function of the problem size. Planning of autonomous microgrids differs from traditional distribution planning because of the need to plan investments not only in the network but also in generation capacity. Generation and distribution planning, traditionally performed separately should be done simultaneously in this case to provide a cost-effective planning solution. Joint planning of generation and distribution can be cast as mixed-integer non-linear integer program and is difficult to solve due to the presence of both integer variables and non-linear constraints. In this study, we use the framework of convex programming to tackle the joint planning problem. The study presents four different convex relaxations of this problem, with different levels of accuracy. We compare their results in terms of computation time and solution quality in order to determine the most relevant formulation to use in function of the problem size.