Need to get back into the habit of blogging!

I have been familiarising myself with a few techniques that are used in the paper "The use of constraint programming for the autonomous management of power flows":

• back tracking search - Search the tree by starting at the root and traversing in a depth first manner. At a particular node C, checks whether a valid solution can be computed from C, if not whole subtree is pruned. Obviously the hard part using a good approximation function that can calculate whether a valid solution exists.
• best first - explores the tree by expanding the most promising node chose according to a specific rule. A* search is an example.

I have implemented the DC power flow equations in matlab, they use considerably less code then the java implementation. Hopefully this matlab implementation will be used by CPLEX, a constraint optimisation solver, so that it can calculate the flow, however I am still working on expressing the problem in CPLEX language. 

In parallel to this I have been describing the model and the problem in mathematical terms, I have written a one page mathematical explanation of the constraints, the network and the variables defining their domains and bounds. This in theory will allow me to then translate it into any coding environment in order to implement it.

A selection of papers that I have read:

1. Dam KH van, Houwing M, Lukszo Z, Bouwmans I. Agent-based control of distributed electricity generation with micro combined heat and power: cross-sectoral learning for process and infrastructure engineers. Computers & Chemical Engineering. 2008;32(1-2):205-217. 

2. Taylor P, Xu T, McArthur S, et al., others. Integrating voltage control and power flow management in AuRA-NMS. In: SmartGrids for Distribution, 2008. IET-CIRED. CIRED Seminar.; 2008:1-4.

3. Pipattanasomporn M, Feroze H, Rahman S. Multi-agent systems in a distributed smart grid: Design and implementation. In: Power Systems Conference and Exposition (PSCE 2009).; 2009:1-8. 

4. Dolan MJ, Davidson EM, Ault GW, McDonald JR. Techniques for managing power flows in active distribution networks within thermal constraints. In: Electricity Distribution-Part 1, 2009. CIRED 2009. 20th International Conference and Exhibition on.; 2009:1-4.

I have implemented the same network as the one in the paper "The use of constraint programming for the autonomous management of power flows". However it does not specify any of the loads, and therefore I will not be able to recreate the exact experiments without them.

Next week I am putting the PhD on a one week hold to code full time on a project for BAE systems.