TY - GEN A1 - Fügenschuh, Armin A1 - Hiller, Benjamin A1 - Humpola, Jesco A1 - Koch, Thorsten A1 - Lehmann, Thomas A1 - Schwarz, Robert A1 - Schweiger, Jonas A1 - Szabó, Jácint T1 - Gas Network Topology Optimization for Upcoming Market Requirements N2 - Gas distribution networks are complex structures that consist of passive pipes, and active, controllable elements such as valves and compressors. Controlling such network means to find a suitable setting for all active components such that a nominated amount of gas can be transmitted from entries to exits through the network, without violating physical or operational constraints. The control of a large-scale gas network is a challenging task from a practical point of view. In most companies the actual controlling process is supported by means of computer software that is able to simulate the flow of the gas. However, the active settings have to be set manually within such simulation software. The solution quality thus depends on the experience of a human planner. When the gas network is insufficient for the transport then topology extensions come into play. Here a set of new pipes or active elements is determined such that the extended network admits a feasible control again. The question again is how to select these extensions and where to place them such that the total extension costs are minimal. Industrial practice is again to use the same simulation software, determine extensions by experience, add them to the virtual network, and then try to find a feasible control of the active elements. The validity of this approach now depends even more on the human planner. Another weakness of this manual simulation-based approach is that it cannot establish infeasibility of a certain gas nomination, unless all settings of the active elements are tried. Moreover, it is impossible to find a cost-optimal network extension in this way. In order to overcome these shortcomings of the manual planning approach we present a new approach, rigorously based on mathematical optimization. Hereto we describe a model for finding feasible controls and then extend this model such that topology extensions can additionally and simultaneously be covered. Numerical results for real-world instances are presented and discussed. T3 - ZIB-Report - 11-09 KW - Mathematical Optimization KW - Gas Distribution Networks KW - Topology Planning Y1 - 2011 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:0297-zib-12348 ER - TY - GEN A1 - Humpola, Jesco A1 - Fügenschuh, Armin A1 - Lehmann, Thomas T1 - A Primal Heuristic for MINLP based on Dual Information N2 - We present a novel heuristic algorithm to identify feasible solutions of a mixed-integer nonlinear programming problem arising in natural gas transportation: the selection of new pipelines to enhance the network's capacity to a desired level in a cost-efficient way. We solve this problem in a linear programming based branch-and-cut approach, where we deal with the nonlinearities by linear outer approximation and spatial branching. At certain nodes of the branching tree, we compute a KKT point for a nonlinear relaxation. Based on the information from the KKT point we alter some of the integer variables in a locally promising way. We describe this heuristic for general MINLPs and then show how to tailor the heuristic to exploit our problem-specific structure. On a test set of real-world instances, we are able to increase the chance of identifying feasible solutions by some order of magnitude compared to standard MINLP heuristics that are already built in the general-purpose MINLP solver SCIP. T3 - ZIB-Report - 13-49 KW - Mixed-Integer Nonlinear Programming KW - Relaxations KW - Heuristics KW - Duality KW - Nonlinear Network Design Applications Y1 - 2013 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:0297-zib-43110 SN - 1438-0064 ER - TY - GEN A1 - Szabó, Jácint T1 - The set of solutions to nomination validation in passive gas transportation networks with a generalized flow formula N2 - In this paper we give an analytical description on the structure of solutions to the gas nomination validation problem in gas transportation networks. These networks are assumed to contain no active devices, only certain hypothetical pipelines, where the flow of gas is modeled by a generalized version of the quadratic Weymouth's equation. The purpose of considering generalized flow formulas is to be able to adapt our results to various gas network optimization problems involving gas flow formulas beyond Weymouth's equation. Such formulas can appear in leaves of branch and bound trees, or they can stem from discretization and linearization carried out at active devices. We call a balanced supply-demand vector a nomination, and the passive nomination validation problem is to decide whether there exist pressures at the nodes generating a given nomination. We prove that in our setup the pressure square vectors generating a given nomination form a one-dimensional connected and continuous curve in the pressure square space, and this curve is a line for the classical Weymouth's equation. We also present a visual approach for the easy comprehension of how this solution curve arises; we give a short investigation of the set of feasible nominations; and finally we give a proof that the nomination validation problem in gas networks with active devices is NP-complete. T3 - ZIB-Report - 11-44 KW - pressure drop equation KW - gas networks KW - generalized flow formula Y1 - 2012 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:0297-zib-15151 SN - 1438-0064 ER - TY - GEN A1 - Martin, Alexander A1 - Geißler, Björn A1 - Hayn, Christine A1 - Hiller, Benjamin A1 - Humpola, Jesco A1 - Koch, Thorsten A1 - Lehmann, Thomas A1 - Morsi, Antonio A1 - Pfetsch, Marc A1 - Schewe, Lars A1 - Schmidt, Martin A1 - Schultz, Rüdiger A1 - Schwarz, Robert A1 - Schweiger, Jonas A1 - Steinbach, Marc A1 - Willert, Bernhard T1 - Optimierung Technischer Kapazitäten in Gasnetzen N2 - Die mittel- und längerfristige Planung für den Gastransport hat sich durch Änderungen in den regulatorischen Rahmenbedingungen stark verkompliziert. Kernpunkt ist die Trennung von Gashandel und -transport. Dieser Artikel diskutiert die hieraus resultierenden mathematischen Planungsprobleme, welche als Validierung von Nominierungen und Buchungen, Bestimmung der technischen Kapazität und Topologieplanung bezeichnet werden. Diese mathematischen Optimierungsprobleme werden vorgestellt und Lösungsansätze skizziert. T3 - ZIB-Report - 11-56 KW - Gasnetzplanung KW - Technische Kapazitäten KW - Nominierungsvalidierung KW - Buchungsvalidierung KW - Topologieplanung Y1 - 2012 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:0297-zib-15121 SN - 1438-0064 ER - TY - GEN A1 - Hiller, Benjamin A1 - Koch, Thorsten A1 - Schewe, Lars A1 - Schwarz, Robert A1 - Schweiger, Jonas T1 - A System to Evaluate Gas Network Capacities: Concepts and Implementation N2 - In 2005 the European Union liberalized the gas market with a disruptive change and decoupled trading of natural gas from its transport. The gas is now transported by independent so-called transmissions system operators or TSOs. The market model established by the European Union views the gas transmission network as a black box, providing shippers (gas traders and consumers) the opportunity to transport gas from any entry to any exit. TSOs are required to offer the maximum possible capacities at each entry and exit such that any resulting gas flow can be realized by the network. The revenue from selling these capacities more than one billion Euro in Germany alone, but overestimating the capacity might compromise the security of supply. Therefore, evaluating the available transport capacities is extremely important to the TSOs. This is a report on a large project in mathematical optimization, set out to develop a new toolset for evaluating gas network capacities. The goals and the challenges as they occurred in the project are described, as well as the developments and design decisions taken to meet the requirements. T3 - ZIB-Report - 18-11 Y1 - 2018 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:0297-zib-67438 SN - 1438-0064 N1 - An earlier version of this report is available as ZR 17-03 at https://opus4.kobv.de/opus4-zib/frontdoor/index/index/docId/6193. ER - TY - GEN A1 - Humpola, Jesco T1 - Sufficient Pruning Conditions for MINLP in Gas Network Design N2 - One quarter of Europe’s energy demand is provided by natural gas distributed through a vast pipeline network covering the whole of Europe. At a cost of 1 million Euros per kilometer the extension of the European pipeline network is already a multi billion Euro business. Therefore, automatic planning tools that support the decision process are desired. We model the topology extension problem in gas networks by a mixed-integer nonlinear program (MINLP). This gives rise to a so-called active transmission problem, a continuous nonlinear non-convex feasibility problem which emerges from the MINLP model by fixing all integral variables. In this article we offer novel sufficient conditions for proving the infeasibility of this active transmission problem. These conditions can be expressed in the form of a mixed-integer program (MILP), i.e., the infeasibility of a non-convex NLP can be certified by solving an MILP. These results provide an efficient bounding procedure in a branch-and-bound algorithm. Our computational results demonstrate a substantial speed-up for the necessary computations. T3 - ZIB-Report - 15-04 KW - Network Design KW - Mixed-Integer Nonlinear Programming KW - Infeasibility Detection Y1 - 2015 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:0297-zib-53489 ER - TY - GEN A1 - Fügenschuh, Armin A1 - Humpola, Jesco T1 - A Unified View on Relaxations for a Nonlinear Network Flow Problem N2 - We consider a nonlinear nonconvex network flow problem that arises, for example, in natural gas or water transmission networks. Given is such network with active and passive components, that is, valves, compressors, pressure regulators (active) and pipelines (passive), and a desired amount of flow at certain specified entry and exit nodes of the network. Besides flow conservation constraints in the nodes the flow must fulfill nonlinear nonconvex pressure loss constraints on the arcs subject to potential values (i.e., pressure levels) in both end nodes of each arc. The problem is how to numerically compute this flow and pressures. We review an existing approach of Maugis (1977) and extend it to the case of networks with active elements (for example, compressors). We further examine different ways of relaxations for the nonlinear network flow model. We compare different approaches based on nonlinear optimization numerically on a set of test instances. T3 - ZIB-Report - 13-31 KW - Nonlinear Network Flow KW - Mixed-Integer Nonlinear Programming KW - Relaxations Y1 - 2013 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:0297-zib-18857 ER - TY - GEN A1 - Humpola, Jesco A1 - Fügenschuh, Armin T1 - A New Class of Valid Inequalities for Nonlinear Network Design Problems N2 - We consider a nonlinear nonconvex network design problem that arises in the extension of natural gas transmission networks. Given is such network with active and passive components, that is, valves, compressors, pressure regulators (active) and pipelines (passive), and a desired amount of flow at certain specified entry and exit nodes of the network. Besides flow conservation constraints in the nodes the flow must fulfill nonlinear nonconvex pressure loss constraints on the arcs subject to potential values (i.e., pressure levels) in both end nodes of each arc. Assume that there does not exist a feasible flow that fulfills all physical constraints and meets the desired entry and exit amounts. Then a natural question is where to extend the network by adding pipes in the most economic way such that this flow becomes feasible. Answering this question is computationally demanding because of the difficult problem structure. We use mixed-integer nonlinear programming techniques that rely on an outer approximation of the overall problem, and a branching on decision variables. We formulate a new class of valid inequalities (or cutting planes) which reduce the overall solution time when added to the formulation. We demonstrate the computational merits of our approach on test instances. T3 - ZIB-Report - 13-06 KW - Network Design KW - Mixed-Integer Nonlinear Programming KW - Cutting Planes Y1 - 2013 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:0297-zib-17771 SN - 1438-0064 ER - TY - GEN A1 - Fügenschuh, Armin A1 - Geißler, Björn A1 - Gollmer, Ralf A1 - Hayn, Christine A1 - Henrion, Rene A1 - Hiller, Benjamin A1 - Humpola, Jesco A1 - Koch, Thorsten A1 - Lehmann, Thomas A1 - Martin, Alexander A1 - Mirkov, Radoslava A1 - Morsi, Antonio A1 - Römisch, Werner A1 - Rövekamp, Jessica A1 - Schewe, Lars A1 - Schmidt, Martin A1 - Schultz, Rüdiger A1 - Schwarz, Robert A1 - Schweiger, Jonas A1 - Stangl, Claudia A1 - Steinbach, Marc A1 - Willert, Bernhard T1 - Mathematical Optimization for Challenging Network Planning Problems in Unbundled Liberalized Gas Markets N2 - The recently imposed new gas market liberalization rules in Germany lead to a change of business of gas network operators. While previously network operator and gas vendor where united, they were forced to split up into independent companies. The network has to be open to any other gas trader at the same conditions, and free network capacities have to be identified and publicly offered in a non-discriminatory way. We show that these new paradigms lead to new and challenging mathematical optimization problems. In order to solve them and to provide meaningful results for practice, all aspects of the underlying problems, such as combinatorics, stochasticity, uncertainty, and nonlinearity, have to be addressed. With such special-tailored solvers, free network capacities and topological network extensions can, for instance, be determined. T3 - ZIB-Report - 13-13 KW - Gas Market Liberalization KW - Entry-Exit Model KW - Gas Network Access Regulation KW - Mixed-Integer Nonlinear Nonconvex Stochastic Optimization Y1 - 2013 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:0297-zib-17821 SN - 1438-0064 ER - TY - GEN A1 - Pfetsch, Marc A1 - Fügenschuh, Armin A1 - Geißler, Björn A1 - Geißler, Nina A1 - Gollmer, Ralf A1 - Hiller, Benjamin A1 - Humpola, Jesco A1 - Koch, Thorsten A1 - Lehmann, Thomas A1 - Martin, Alexander A1 - Morsi, Antonio A1 - Rövekamp, Jessica A1 - Schewe, Lars A1 - Schmidt, Martin A1 - Schultz, Rüdiger A1 - Schwarz, Robert A1 - Schweiger, Jonas A1 - Stangl, Claudia A1 - Steinbach, Marc A1 - Vigerske, Stefan A1 - Willert, Bernhard T1 - Validation of Nominations in Gas Network Optimization: Models, Methods, and Solutions N2 - In this article we investigate methods to solve a fundamental task in gas transportation, namely the validation of nomination problem: Given a gas transmission network consisting of passive pipelines and active, controllable elements and given an amount of gas at every entry and exit point of the network, find operational settings for all active elements such that there exists a network state meeting all physical, technical, and legal constraints. We describe a two-stage approach to solve the resulting complex and numerically difficult mixed-integer non-convex nonlinear feasibility problem. The first phase consists of four distinct algorithms facilitating mixed-integer linear, mixed-integer nonlinear, reduced nonlinear, and complementarity constrained methods to compute possible settings for the discrete decisions. The second phase employs a precise continuous nonlinear programming model of the gas network. Using this setup, we are able to compute high quality solutions to real-world industrial instances whose size is significantly larger than networks that have appeared in the literature previously. T3 - ZIB-Report - 12-41 Y1 - 2012 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:0297-zib-16531 SN - 1438-0064 ER - TY - GEN A1 - Hiller, Benjamin A1 - Koch, Thorsten A1 - Schewe, Lars A1 - Schwarz, Robert A1 - Schweiger, Jonas T1 - A System to Evaluate Gas Network Capacities: Concepts and Implementation N2 - Since 2005, the gas market in the European Union is liberalized and the trading of natural gas is decoupled from its transport. The transport is done by so-called transmissions system operators or TSOs. The market model established by the European Union views the gas transmission network as a black box, providing shippers (gas traders and consumers) the opportunity to transport gas from any entry to any exit. TSOs are required to offer maximum independent capacities at each entry and exit such that the resulting gas flows can be realized by the network without compromising security of supply. Therefore, evaluating the available transport capacities is extremely important to the TSOs. This paper gives an overview of the toolset for evaluating gas network capacities that has been developed within the ForNe project, a joint research project of seven research partners initiated by Open Grid Europe, Germany's biggest TSO. While most of the relevant mathematics is described in the book "Evaluating Gas Network Capacities", this article sketches the system as a whole, describes some developments that have taken place recently, and gives some details about the current implementation. T3 - ZIB-Report - 17-03 KW - operations research in energy KW - gas network optimization KW - entry-exit model KW - freely allocable capacity KW - large-scale mixed-integer nonlinear programming Y1 - 2017 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:0297-zib-61931 SN - 1438-0064 N1 - A revised and extended version is available as ZIB-Report 18-11. ER -