Optimal control of investments for quality of supply improvement in electrical energy distribution networks

This paper considers the problem of deciding multi-period investments for maintenance and upgrade of electrical energy distribution networks. After describing the network as a constrained hybrid dynamical system, optimal control theory is applied to optimize profit under a complex incentive/penalty mechanism imposed by public authorities. The dynamics of the system and the cost function are translated into a mixed integer optimization model, whose solution gives the optimal investment policy over the multi-period horizon. While for a reduced-size test problem the pure mixed-integer approach provides the best optimal control policy, for real-life large-scale scenarios a heuristic solution is also introduced. Finally, the uncertainty associated with the dynamical model of the network is taken care of by adopting ideas from stochastic programming. (c) 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.