Optimal Power Flow: Comparison with Matpower

Comparing the performance of Matpower with our Polar ACOPF model (both using IPOPT with linear solver MA27) with standard options, we find that our model, although slightly slower, has very comparable time performance statistics to Matpower. The table below displays the real time (in seconds) it takes to converge to objective values within numerical tolerances of each other.

Note that our AC models are able to solve the 3375 bus Polish case, a case for which Matpower (on its basic settings) was unable to find a solution. In addition, the ACOPF models returned a better objective value in the 2383 bus Polish case. We believe this is due to the handling of symmetry in line definition, as case2383wp has both lines [344-346] and [346-344] in the dataset (as opposed to defining line [344-346] twice). The documentation on data utilities provides further information on how this is handled in data processing, such to avoid conflict when using the model archive.

Test Case Objective Matpower Time GAMS time
IEEE 6 Bus 3.143974529e+03 0.1326 0.379
IEEE 9 Bus 1.254055725e+06 0.1429 0.222
IEEE 14 Bus 8.081526256e+03 0.1606 0.217
IEEE 24 Bus 6.335220252e+04 0.1989 0.255
IEEE 30 Bus 5.768923368e+02 0.1831 0.270
IEEE 39 Bus 4.186417779e+04 0.2440 0.281
IEEE 57 Bus 4.173778629e+04 0.2087 0.324
IEEE 118 Bus 1.296606850e+05 0.3419 0.397
IEEE 300 Bus 7.197250765e+05 0.6823 0.726
Polish 2383wp* 1.8630702523e+06 4.8205 6.006
Polish 2736sp 1.307883126e+06 5.2036 5.708
Polish 2737sop 7.776293002e+05 4.6181 5.740
Polish 2746wop 1.208279810e+06 4.6862 6.352
Polish 2746wp 1.631775103e+06 6.0592 6.640
Polish 3012wp 2.591706565e+06 7.2076 7.435
Polish 3120sp 2.142703764e+06 7.1659 7.809
Polish 3375wp** 7.412030674e+06* 180.24* 9.389

* Matpower converges to a different solution, 1.868511825e+06
** Matpower failed to solve this case within the time limit