Improved methods for optimization of power systems with renewable generation using electromagnetic transient simulators.

This paper introduces new techniques for efficient use of electromagnetic transient simulators combined with optimization algorithms to optimize power systems with converter-tied renewable resources. This work is motivated by several challenges that must be overcome for simulation-based optimal design, including high computational burden of simulating large switching systems, repetitive nature of the design cycle, and large number of variables that need to be handled. Two screening methods are proposed in this paper to identify the parameters that do not influence the optimal solution significantly and hence can be ignored. Moreover, hybridization of optimization algorithms and parallel processing techniques are explored to achieve additional computational benefits. Case studies of systems with different complexity and number of variables are used to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed techniques. • Several new methods for accelerated simulation-based optimization of power systems are introduced. • Screening methods for removing non-influential parameters from optimization are introduced. • Parallel processing and hybrid, multi-solver algorithms are introduced. • Examples of power systems with renewable resources are shown to quantify the benefits of the proposed methods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]