Smart grid load balancing techniques via simultaneous switch/tie-line/wire configurations

Fast changing power distribution systems request a dynamic system configuration capability of reacting to volatile consumption demands in an economical way. Load balancing in power distribution systems is an essential technique for smart grid that enables reliable electricity delivery to end customers. This paper is the first work focusing on load balancing using switch reconfiguration, tie-line addition, and wire upgrade simultaneously, while existing works adopt only one of the three techniques to configure the power distribution system. We observe that the new load balancing problem induces a new challenge, dynamic topology rotation, which cannot be handled by existing solutions. To overcome this challenge, we first consider bidirectional power flows and formulate the load balancing problem as a mixed-integer quadratically constrained quadratic program (MIQCQP). To reduce the computational complexity, it is further transformed into a mixed-integer linear program (MILP) without loss of optimality. Experimental results show that, on real power distribution networks, our approach produces optimal solutions that are unlikely to be found in ad-hoc heuristics methods.