Network Flow Linear Programming Techniques and Their Application to Fuel Scheduling and Contingency Analysis

In recent years there has been growing interest in the use of network flow algorithms to solve power system fuel, hydro, and interchange scheduling problems. There have also been attempts to solve electrical power flow problems with related transportation algorithms. The problems solved using network flow or transportation algorithms are naturally linear, or forced into a linear form, and are therefore also amenable to solution by more general linear programming (LP) techniaues. It has been claimed that specialized network flow algorithms are more efficient than general LP for problems which can be expressed in network flow format. On the other hand the use of general LP is attractive, since a considerable amount of information on its application to power systems problems is available. This paper describes relationships between general LP and network flow algorithms and shows how LP can be made competitive for network problems. Applications to fuel scheduling and contingency analysis are discussed.