Variance-Aware Optimal Power Flow: Addressing the Tradeoff Between Cost, Security, and Variability

Recent work has studied modifications to DC optimal power flow (DC-OPF) computations so as to better account for risk arising as a result of stochastic variation in the output of renewable sources. Typically such modifications rely on mathematical constructs, such as chance-constraints, that can still yield convex formulations. However, numerical simulations show that the computed policies can translate into power flow patterns with high variance. We introduce a number of convex variants of OPF that tradeoff variance and cost minimization, describe practical algorithms for the solution of such problems, and present numerical experiments.