An economic dispatch algorithm for congestion management of smart power networks

We present a novel oblivious routing economic dispatch (ORED) algorithm for power systems. The method is inspired by the oblivious network design which works perfectly for networks in which different sources (generators) send power flow toward their destinations (load points) while they are unaware of the current network state and other flows. Basically, our focus is on the economic dispatch while managing congestion and mitigating power losses. Furthermore, we studied a loss-minimizing type of the economic dispatch which aims to minimize the emission by optimizing the total power generation rather than system cost. Comparing to state-of-the-art economic dispatch methods, our algorithm is independent of network topology and works for both radial and non-radial networks. Our algorithm is thus suited for large-scale economic dispatch problems that will emerge in the future smart distribution grids with host of small, decentralized, and flexibly controllable prosumers; i.e., entities able to consume and produce electricity. The effectiveness of the proposed ORED is evaluated via the IEEE 57-bus standard test system. The simulation results verify the superior performance of the proposed method over the current methods in the literature in terms of congestion management and power loss minimization.