Parallel Computing Based Solution for Reliability-constrained Distribution Network Planning

The main goal of distribution network(DN)expan-sion planning is essentially to achieve minimal investment con-strained by specified reliability requirements.The reliability-constrained distribution network planning(RcDNP)problem can be cast as an instance of mixed-integer linear programming(MILP)which involves ultra-heavy computation burden espe-cially for large-scale DNs.In this paper,we propose a parallel computing based solution method for the RcDNP problem.The RcDNP is decomposed into a backbone grid and several lateral grid problems with coordination.Then,a parallelizable aug-mented Lagrangian algorithm with acceleration method is devel-oped to solve the coordination planning problems.The lateral grid problems are solved in parallel through coordinating with the backbone grid planning problem.Gauss-Seidel iteration is adopted on the subset of the convex hull of the feasible region constructed by decomposition.Under mild conditions,the opti-mality and convergence of the proposed method are verified.Numerical tests show that the proposed method can significant-ly reduce the solution time and make the RcDNP applicable for real-worldproblems.