Maximization of the feed-in of renewable energy into high-voltage grids by optimal switching

In this paper the problem of finding optimal topological configurations of a power transmission system is considered with the aim of maximizing the renewable energy injection. A realistic modeling strategy for bus couplers in multiple-busbar stations is proposed. The solution of the resulting mixed-integer nonlinear programming problem (MINLP) is carried out by a novel binary variant of the Particle Swarm Optimization algorithm (PSO). The performance of the method is illustrated by different simulation scenarios on a realistic 110 kV grid. The analysis shows that the initialization scheme has large impact on the solution space and the convergence characteristic. Suggestions for parameterization of the proposed algorithm under power system operational aspects are discussed.