Stable Relay Learning Optimization Approach for Fast Power System Production Cost Minimization Simulation

Production cost minimization (PCM) simulation is commonly employed for assessing the operational efficiency, economic viability, and reliability, providing valuable insights for power system planning and operations. However, solving a PCM problem is time-consuming, consisting of numerous binary variables for simulation horizon extending over months and years. This hinders rapid assessment of modern energy systems with diverse planning requirements. Existing methods for accelerating PCM tend to sacrifice accuracy for speed. In this paper, we propose a stable relay learning optimization (s-RLO) approach within the Branch and Bound (B&B) algorithm. The proposed approach offers rapid and stable performance, and ensures optimal solutions. The two-stage s-RLO involves an imitation learning (IL) phase for accurate policy initialization and a reinforcement learning (RL) phase for time-efficient fine-tuning. When implemented on the popular SCIP solver, s-RLO returns the optimal solution up to 2× faster than the default relpscost rule and 1.4× faster than IL, or exhibits a smaller gap at the predefined time limit. The proposed approach shows stable performance, reducing fluctuations by approximately 50% compared with IL. The efficacy of the proposed s-RLO approach is supported by numerical results.