Assessing the Impact of Higher Order Network Structure on Tightness of OPF Relaxation

AC optimal power flow (AC OPF) is a fundamental problem in power system operation and control. Accurately modeling the network physics via the AC power flow equations makes AC OPF a challenging nonconvex problem that results in significant computational challenges. To search for global optima, recent research has developed a variety of convex relaxations to bound the optimal objective values of AC OPF problems. However, the quality of these bounds varies for different test cases, suggesting that OPF problems exhibit a range of difficulties. Understanding this range of difficulty is helpful for improving relaxation algorithms. Power grids are naturally represented as graphs, with buses as nodes and power lines as edges. Graph theory offers various methods to measure power grid graphs, enabling researchers to characterize system structure and optimize algorithms. Leveraging graph theory-based algorithms, this paper presents an empirical study aiming to find correlations between optimality gaps and local structures in the underlying test case's graph. Network graphlets, which are induced subgraphs of a network, are used to investigate the correlation between power system topology and OPF relaxation tightness. Specifically, this paper examines how the existence of particular graphlets that are either too frequent or infrequent in the power system graph affects the tightness of the OPF convex relaxation. Numerous test cases are analyzed from a local structural perspective to establish a correlation between their topology and their OPF convex relaxation tightness.