Elimination of transmission system overloads through branch switching

This paper aims to contribute to the development of methods for alleviating overloads in the transmission system. Among the several possible alternatives to achieve this goal, branch (transmission lines and transformers) switching will be the focus in this work. Even though this possibility is well-known, a very interesting branch switching method was proposed recently in the literature to identify the candidate branches to be switched. In this work the idea is to propose improvements to this method in such a way it becomes efficient enough to be used in real time monitoring and control environments. Those improvements are based on specific calculation techniques and information about the nature of power systems operation.