A direct nonlinear predictor-corrector primal-dual interior point algorithm for optimal power flows

A new algorithm using the primal-dual interior point method with the predictor-corrector for solving nonlinear optimal power flow (OPF) problems is presented. The formulation and the solution technique are new. Both equalities and inequalities in the OPF are considered and simultaneously solved in a nonlinear manner based on the Karush-Kuhn-Tucker conditions. The major computational effort of the algorithm is solving a symmetrical system of equations, whose sparsity structure is fixed. Therefore only one optimal ordering and one symbolic factorization are involved. Numerical results of several test systems ranging in size from 9 to 2423 buses are presented and comparisons are made with the pure primal-dual interior point algorithm. The results show that the predictor-corrector primal-dual interior point algorithm for OPF is computationally more attractive than the pure primal-dual interior point algorithm in terms of speed and iteration count