AC-DC Security-Constrained Optimal Power Flow for the Australian National Electricity Market

This paper presents a new methodology to solve the integrated ac-dc security-constrained optimal power flow (SCOPF) problem for large-scale power systems, with a focus on the Australian National Electricity Market (NEM). The proposed SCOPF is based on a decomposition scheme that significantly reduces the dimensionality of the problem and thus improves the computational performance. It further supports a contingency ranking, evaluation, and non-dominated filtering algorithm, cyclic selection of filtered contingencies, careful choice of slack variables, and a tailored warm start to the nonlinear problem. The methodology is validated against the two-stage mathematical programming model that uses an explicit nonlinear model of both the base case and the contingency cases, at a slightly higher cost but significantly faster execution. Moreover, the NEM power system, is studied addressing different scenarios including load variations, renewable energy zone integration, and additional reinforcements like point-to-point and meshed HVDC. The proposed approaches provides preventive solutions in less than 5 min thus affirming the model's effectiveness in real-time applications and planning studies.