The Convex-Relaxation-Based Method for Power Flow Analysis

Power flow analysis is the most fundamental problem in the power system, which guides energy’s operation, dispatch, and control. This paper proposes a novel method for power flow calculation with the convex-relaxation technique. An unrelated variable can be represented with the linear constraints by setting the four sets of voltage variables with three stages of the newly-defined variables. The second-order cone relaxation replaces the non-linearity in the power flow relationship. Thus, the power flow calculation becomes a convex optimization problem. Both of the solving efficiency and uniqueness of the solution can be guaranteed at the same time because of the advantages of convex optimization. The availability of the proposed method is tested by the IEEE benchmark system.