An application of high performance computing to transmission switching

We present a parallel implementation of three transmission switching algorithms. The first is based on a parallel search of all candidate lines, the second is based on a priority listing of lines and the third is based on decomposing the set of candidate lines in smaller subsets that are solved in parallel. We present a duality result that justifies the priority listing of the second algorithm. The We apply the algorithms on an IEEE 118 bus system and compare the relative performance of the algorithms in terms of cost of system operations. We envision the use of high performance computing for implementing the proposed algorithms in a real-time setting in order to exploit topology control of transmission networks for operating the system at minimum cost and for responding to system contingencies.