90-XX OPERATIONS RESEARCH, MATHEMATICAL PROGRAMMING
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A decision support system relies on frequent re-solving of similar problem instances. While the general structure remains the same in corresponding applications, the input parameters are updated on a regular basis. We propose a generative neural network design for learning integer decision variables of mixed-integer linear programming (MILP) formulations of these problems. We utilise a deep neural network discriminator and a MILP solver as our oracle to train our generative neural network. In this article, we present the results of our design applied to the transient gas optimisation problem. With the trained network we produce a feasible solution in 2.5s, use it as a warm-start solution, and thereby decrease global optimal solution solve time by 60.5%.
Secure energy transport is considered as highly relevant for the basic infrastructure of nowadays society and economy. To satisfy increasing demands and to handle more diverse transport situations, operators of energy networks regularly expand the capacity of their network by building new network elements, known as the expansion planning problem.
A key constraint function in expansion planning problems is a nonlinear and nonconvex potential loss function. In order to improve the algorithmic performance of state-of-the-art MINLP solvers, this paper presents an algebraic description for the convex envelope of this function. Through a thorough computational study, we show that this tighter relaxation tremendously improve the performance of the MINLP solver SCIP on a large test set of practically relevant instances for the expansion planning problem. In particular, the results show that our achievements lead to an improvement of the solver performance for a development version by up to 58%.
We investigate polyhedral aspects of the Periodic Event Scheduling Problem (PESP), the mathematical basis for periodic timetabling problems in public transport. Flipping the orientation of arcs, we obtain a new class of valid inequalities, the flip inequalities, comprising both the known cycle and change-cycle inequalities. For a point of the LP relaxation, a violated flip inequality can be found in pseudo-polynomial time, and even in linear time for a spanning tree solution. Our main result is that the integer vertices of the polytope described by the flip inequalities are exactly the vertices of the PESP polytope, i.e., the convex hull of all feasible periodic slacks with corresponding modulo parameters. Moreover, we show that this flip polytope equals the PESP polytope in some special cases. On the computational side, we devise several heuristic approaches concerning the separation of cutting planes from flip inequalities. These produce better dual bounds for the smallest and largest instance of the benchmarking library PESPlib.
Growing demand, distributed generation, such as renewable energy sources (RES), and the increasing role of storage systems to mitigate the volatility of RES on a medium voltage level, push existing distribution grids to their limits. Therefore, necessary network expansion needs to be evaluated to guarantee a safe and reliable electricity supply in the future taking these challenges into account. This problem is formulated as an optimal power flow (OPF) problem which combines network expansion, volatile generation and storage systems, minimizing network expansion and generation costs. As storage systems introduce a temporal coupling into the system, a multiperiod OPF problem is needed and analysed in this thesis. To reduce complexity, the network expansion problem is represented in a continuous nonlinear programming formulation by using fundamental properties of electrical engeneering. This formulation is validated succesfully against a common mixed integer programming approach on a 30 and 57 bus network with respect to solution and computing time. As the OPF problem is, in general, a nonconvex, nonlinear problem and, thus, hard to solve, convex relaxations of the power flow equations have gained increasing interest. Sufficient conditions are represented which guarantee exactness of a second-order cone (SOC) relaxation of an operational OPF in radial networks. In this thesis, these conditions are enhanced for the network expansion planning problem. Additionally, nonconvexities introduced by the choice of network expansion variables are relaxed by using McCormick envelopes. These relaxations are then applied on the multiperiod OPF and compared to the original problem on a 30 and a 57 bus network. In particular, the computational time is decreased by an order up to 10^2 by the SOC relaxation while it provides either an exact solution or a sufficient lower bound on the original problem. Finally, a sensitivity study is performed on weights of network expansion costs showing strong dependency of both the solution of performed expansion and solution time on the chosen weights.