Optimal control of investments for quality of supply improvement in electrical energy distribution networks

  • Authors:
  • A. Bemporad;D. Muñoz de la Peña;P. Piazzesi

  • Affiliations:
  • Dip. di Ingegneria dell'Informazione, University of Siena, Italy;Dep. de Ingeniería de Sistemas y Automática, Universidad de Sevilla, Spain;ENEL Distribuzione, Pianificazione e Controllo, Florence, Italy

  • Venue:
  • Automatica (Journal of IFAC)
  • Year:
  • 2006

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Abstract

This paper considers the problem of deciding multi-period investments for maintenance and upgrade of electrical energy distribution networks. After describing the network as a constrained hybrid dynamical system, optimal control theory is applied to optimize profit under a complex incentive/penalty mechanism imposed by public authorities. The dynamics of the system and the cost function are translated into a mixed integer optimization model, whose solution gives the optimal investment policy over the multi-period horizon. While for a reduced-size test problem the pure mixed-integer approach provides the best optimal control policy, for real-life large-scale scenarios a heuristic solution is also introduced. Finally, the uncertainty associated with the dynamical model of the network is taken care of by adopting ideas from stochastic programming.