Practical heuristic approach to solve the Optimal Transmission Switching problem for Smart Grids

The optimal transmission switching (OTS) problem, a new hot research topic, has been receiving special attention from the power systems community. If implemented as a routine industry practice for smart grids, it could bring significant economic benefits. The computing time is one of the barriers to implement OTS in utility practice. In this work, the implementation of a very simple and efficient technique based on the backward approach is proposed to solve the OTS problem, both in its serial and parallel versions. This technique is also very practical and fast, and its implementation is based on the evaluation of simple optimal power flows. Tests with realistic power networks show the good and fast results obtained with this approach.