Quick Start Guide

Once PowerModels is installed, Ipopt is installed, and a network data file (e.g. "nesta_case3_lmbd.m") has been acquired, an AC Optimal Power Flow can be executed with,

using PowerModels
using Ipopt

run_ac_opf("nesta_case3_lmbd.m", IpoptSolver())

Similarly, a DC Optimal Power Flow can be executed with

run_dc_opf("nesta_case3_lmbd.m", IpoptSolver())

Getting Results

The run commands in PowerModels return detailed results data in the form of a dictionary. This dictionary can be saved for further processing as follows,

result = run_ac_opf("nesta_case3_lmbd.m", IpoptSolver())

For example, the algorithm's runtime and final objective value can be accessed with,

result["solve_time"]
result["objective"]

The "solution" field contains detailed information about the solution produced by the run method. For example, the following dictionary comprehension can be used to inspect the bus phase angles in the solution,

Dict(name => data["va"] for (name, data) in result["solution"]["bus"])

For more information about PowerModels result data see the PowerModels Result Data Format section.

Accessing Different Formulations

The function "run_ac_opf" and "run_dc_opf" are shorthands for a more general formulation-independent OPF execution, "run_opf". For example, run_ac_opf is equivalent to,

run_opf("nesta_case3_lmbd.m", ACPPowerModel, IpoptSolver())

where "ACPPowerModel" indicates an AC formulation in polar coordinates. This more generic run_opf() allows one to solve an OPF problem with any power network formulation implemented in PowerModels. For example, an SOC Optimal Power Flow can be run with,

run_opf("nesta_case3_lmbd.m", SOCWRPowerModel, IpoptSolver())

Modifying Network Data

The following example demonstrates one way to perform multiple PowerModels solves while modify the network data in Julia,

network_data = PowerModels.parse_file("nesta_case3_lmbd.m")

run_opf(network_data, ACPPowerModel, IpoptSolver())

network_data["bus"]["3"]["pd"] = 0.0
network_data["bus"]["3"]["qd"] = 0.0

run_opf(network_data, ACPPowerModel, IpoptSolver())

For additional details about the network data, see the PowerModels Network Data Format section.

Inspecting the Formulation

The following example demonstrates how to break a run_opf call into seperate model building and solving steps. This allows inspection of the JuMP model created by PowerModels for the AC-OPF problem,

pm = build_generic_model("nesta_case3_lmbd.m", ACPPowerModel, PowerModels.post_opf)

print(pm.model)

solve_generic_model(pm, IpoptSolver())