ADMM Based Distributed Load Flow for Radial Power Networks

Abstract

This paper presents a fully distributed optimization scheme for solving the load flow model of the radial distribution networks. The consensus based alternating direction method of multipliers (ADMM) is used to realise the proposed distributed framework. To ensure that the ADMM algorithm converges to the exact load flow solution, convexification of the load flow model is achieved through second-order conic relaxations. The proposed method gives a way to incorporate the load flow model of a radial network within the distributed optimal power flow based solvers. The exactness of the proposed distributed optimization framework for the load flow problem is shown through numerical simulations on the UKGDS 95-bus and the IEEE 123-bus systems.