Optimal Transmission Switching Considering Voltage Security and N-1 Contingency Analysis

In power system operation, transmission congestion can drastically limit more economical generation units from being dispatched. In this paper, optimal transmission switching as a congestion management tool is utilized to change network topology which, in turn, would lead to higher electricity market efficiency. Transmission switching (TS) is formulated as an optimization problem to determine the most influential lines as candidates for disconnection. In order to relieve congestion without violating voltage security, TS is embedded in an optimal power flow (OPF) problem with AC constraints and binary variables, i.e., a mixed-integer nonlinear programming (MINLP) problem, solved using Benders decomposition. Also, a methodology is presented which provides a guideline to the system operator showing the order of switching manoeuvres that have to be followed in order to relieve congestion. It is also shown that TS based on DC optimal power flow (DCOPF) formulation as used in the literature may jeopardize system security and in some cases result in voltage collapse due to the shortcomings in its simplified models. In order to evaluate the applicability and effectiveness of the proposed method, the IEEE 57-bus and IEEE 300-bus test systems are used.