Summary
This paper presents a tailored version of the alternating direction method of multipliers to achieve a centralized voltage and VAR optimization (VVO) in the electric distribution system. The adopted VVO model is a mixed‐integer nonlinear optimization problem derived from the generic optimal power flow problem. A novel generalized and decomposable version of the VVO model is developed first to establish the proposed approach. The approach accounts for load tap‐changers and switchable capacitor banks for illustration. However, it can be expanded to a broad range of controllable VVO equipment with discrete/integer settings. The approach performance is validated on different distribution networks. Results are compared with current leading heuristic approaches used to solve nonconvex mixed‐integer nonlinear problems such as the Branch‐and‐Bound method. Furthermore, a comparison vs the branch flow model‐based mixed integer second‐order conic programming model is conducted to illustrate the proposed model's advantages. Moreover, to benchmark the proposed approach optimality, a direct search scheme is developed to capture guaranteed globally optimal results. Experiments show the superiority of the proposed approach with noteworthy convergence rates and promising optimal solution allocation.