Solving the power flow problem in a distributed fashion empowers different grid operators to compute the overall grid state without having to share grid models—this is a practical problem to which industry does not have off-the-shelf answers. We propose two physically consistent problem formulations (a feasibility and a least-squares formulation) amenable to two solution methods from distributed optimization: the Alternating direction method of multipliers (admm), and the Augmented Lagrangian based Alternating Direction Inexact Newton method (aladin); the latter comes with convergence guarantees. In addition, we provide open source matlab code for rapid prototyping for distributed power flow (rapidpf): a fully matpower-compatible software that facilitates the laborious task of formulating power flow problems as distributed optimization problems. Simulation results for systems ranging from 53 buses (with 3 regions) up to 4662 buses (with 5 regions) show that the least-squares formulation solved with aladin requires just about half a dozen coordinating steps before the power flow problem is solved.

以分布式方式解决潮流问题使不同的电网运营商无需共享电网模型即可计算总体电网状态，这是一个实际问题，行业尚无现成的答案。我们提出了两种物理上一致的问题公式（可行性和最小二乘公式），适用于分布式优化中的两种求解方法：乘数的交替方向方法（admm）和基于增强拉格朗日的交替方向不精确牛顿方法（aladin）；后者带有收敛保证。此外，我们提供了开源的matlab代码，用于分布式功率流的快速原型设计（快速pf）：完全的matpower兼容软件，可简化将潮流问题表述为分布式优化问题的艰巨任务。从53辆公交车（3个区域）到4662辆公交车（5个区域）的系统仿真结果表明，用阿拉丁解决的最小二乘公式仅需要大约六个协调步骤即可解决潮流问题。