Aims & Objectives

Against the background of liberalization of energy markets, increasing fuel costs and decentralized power generation by renewable energy sources, nowadays running an electrical power grid in an efficient way is becoming more and more important. The problem of determining an optimal operation state and an optimal power grid extension is known as ‘Optimal Power Flow’ (OPF). Mathematically speaking, OPF is a non-linear and non-convex optimization problem in up to millions of variables. Due to its high complexity, power system operators still have to use simplified physical models for describing electrical grids. The project ‘Optimal Economic Power Flow’ aims at developing new numerical approaches to handle the high problem size arising from an accurate alternating current (AC) physical model.

Research Topics

• Investigation of usability of existing nonlinear programming methods for solving the OPF problem
• Development of a specialized linear solver adopted to the underlying physical model
• Utilisation of large HPC systems to solve real-world scenarios

Funding

This project is funded by the DFG.

Consortium

• Engineering Mathematics and Computing Lab (EMCL), Prof. Dr. Vincent Heuveline, IWR, Heidelberg University
• Institute for Industrial Production (IIP), Chair of Energy Economics, Prof. Dr. Wolf Fichtner, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT)
• Institute of Electric Energy System and High-Voltage Technology (IEH), Prof. Dr. Thomas Leibfried, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT)
• Datamining and Uncertainty Quantification Group (DMQ), Heidelberg Institute of Theoretical Studies (HITS gGmbH)

People

• Prof. Dr. Vincent Heuveline
• Prof. Dr. Wolf Fichtner
• Prof. Dr. Thomas Leibfried
• Dr. Michael Schick
• Dr. Valentin Bertsch
• Dr. Michael Suriyah
• Philipp Gerstner
• Viktor Slednev
• Nico Meyer-Hübner

Contact

• Philipp Gerstner

Organized Events

• International Symposium on Energy System Optimization (ISESO 2015), November 9 - 10, 2015, at Heidelberg Institute for Theoretical Studies.

Research Data

In the course of the project, a methodology was developed for aggregating data from different sources like transmission system operators (TSO), or Open Street Map (OSM) in order to obtain the power grid load with a high spatial and temporal resolution. The file listed below contains the residual load at selected nodes within the 110kV, 220kV and 380kV power grid in Germany for the 8760 hours of 2012. For each node, the corresponding GPS coordinates are provided as well. For a more detailed description of the applied methodology, we refer to the publication "Regionalizing input data for generation and transmission expansion planning models" (Slednev et al) listed below. 

Download Gridload_2012.zip

Publications

• N. Meyer-Huebner, M. Suriyah, T. Leibfried, V. Slednev, V. Bertsch, W. Fichtner, P. Gerstner, M. Schick, and V. Heuveline. Optimal storage operation with model predictive control in the german transmission grid. In Proceedings of International Symposium of Energy System Optimization (to appear). Springer, 2016
• V. Slednev, M. Ruppert, V. Bertsch, W. Fichtner, N. Meyer-Hübner, M. Suriyah, T. Leibfried, P. Gerstner, M. Schick, and V. Heuveline. Regionalizing input data for generation and transmission expansion planning models. In Proceedings of International Symposium of Energy System Optimization (to appear). Springer, 2016
• N. Meyer-Huebner, M. Suriyah, T. Leibfried, V. Slednev, V. Bertsch, W. Fichtner, P. Gerstner, M. Schick, and V. Heuveline. Time constrained optimal power flow calculations on the german power grid. In International ETG Congress, Bonn, pages 1–7, 2015
• P. Gerstner, V. Heuveline, M. Schick: A multilevel domain decomposition approach for solving time constrained optimal power flow problems, EMCL Preprint Series 2015-04, 2015
• N. Meyer-Huebner, M. Suriyah, and T. Leibfried. On efficient computation of time constrained optimal power flow in rectangular form. In PowerTech, 2015 IEEE Eindhoven, pages 1–6, June
  2015

Conference contributions and talks

• N. Meyer-Hübner: Optimal Storage Operation with Model Predictive Control in the German Transmission Grid, ISESO 2015, Heidelberg, Germany, November 9-10, 2015
• V. Slednev: Regionalizing Input Data for Generation and Transmission Expansion Planning Models, ISESO 2015, Heidelberg, Deutschland, November 9-10, 2015
• P. Gerstner: Towards parallel solvers for Optimal Power Flow problems, 7th KoMSO Challenge Workshop, Heidelberg,Germany, October 8-9, 2015
• P. Gerstner: A Domain Decomposition Approach for Solving Optimal Economic Power Flow Problems in Parallel, EURO 2015, Glasgow, United Kingdom, July 12-15, 2015
• N. Meyer-Hübner: On Efficient Computation of Time Constrained Optimal Power Flow in Rectangular Form, Powertech 2015, Eindhoven, Netherlands, June 29 - July 2, 2015